


kiss your eyes and repent

by viroqu



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Goro is a Repressed Old Man, M/M, Nomad V, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, Roadtrip, Spoilers, Terminal Illnesses, Texting, The Devil Ending (Cyberpunk 2077), and other minor character appearances, canon divergence because I decided to forgo timelines. we don't need them, obviously endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:01:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28842795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viroqu/pseuds/viroqu
Summary: He kept returning to V’s glassy stare, his uneasy smile as he rejected the offer. The last words they had spoken."Got no idea how sweet it is to be free."Takemura did not understand.-Post-"Devil" ending, Goro checks up on V’s condition after he returns to earth to live his last days.Or the story of how Goro and V go on a vacation.
Relationships: Goro Takemura & V, Goro Takemura/Male V, Goro Takemura/V
Comments: 20
Kudos: 94





	1. September-October

**Author's Note:**

> There are two types of canon-divergences here.
> 
> The first one, most major, is that I decided to change the canon timeline of events, originally starting on December 2077, to August 2077 b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶I̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶g̶o̶t̶ because most recognizable holidays happen in the last months of the year, thus I could write some fun shenanigans.
> 
> The smaller divergence (retcon?) is because my idiot ass had forgotten that they transferred Takemura to Takamatsu 30 pages into the fic, but I used my executive authority to give a vague explanation why not to, SO (also I have some fun with the dialogue options).
> 
> The title comes from the verse by egyptian poet Farouq Jwaydeh: “and if the devil was to ever see you, he’d kiss your eyes and repent.”
> 
> Alternative title: The Rituals (They Sure Are Intricate).

_It is a beautiful jail around them, green and lush, just like the real thing. Perhaps, thinks V, it’s a kind of mercy. If the birds that chirp at their sides behind the glass could fly away, where would they even go? There’re no rainforests to go back to, just the blue skies. And blue skies can’t feed you, they can’t home you either. Can’t keep you safe._

_It’s a steep price to pay for freedom. The reality is, that the birds would simply die._

_If V smashed the smart glass that separates the outside from the inside of the habitat, perhaps the birds wouldn’t even fly. Why would they? Everything they need is already in, graciously provided by the world’s biggest and richest corporation._

_“Do yourself a favor Goro. Ghost… get outta here. Forget Arasaka…”_

_V can barely remember what he says to the other man, desperate for him to_ understand _._

_“…Hit the streets, disappear… get gigs, feed cats… But please,” And V grabs Goro by the shoulders, gently shaking them, “just steer clear of Arasaka.”_

_Takemura closes his eyes._

_“You know I cannot do that,” Takemura holds the other man’s gaze as he turns down V’s plea, “But I thank you. Truly.”_

_V thinks they look beautiful, like distant balconies illuminated by the moon. Like the faraway light of a star, galaxies apart from where V’s standing._

_And V lets his left hand fall limply from the snow-white shoulder of Takemura’s perfect suit. Takemura grabs the right hand, pressing it gently before removing it with his own._

_“Go, V. Finish what we started.”_

_And the tropical birds inside the artificial jungle around them sing as if they weren’t deep inside the very depths of hell._

_V closes his mouth; his lips form a single line. There’s no detachment in Takemura’s silver eyes. Apathy? No. Resignation, perhaps._

_V turns away and goes down the hallway. Just as he is steps from the end, V looks back._

_“You’re an honorable man, Goro. If only you worked for someone like that, too.”_

_And if Takemura reacts, V doesn’t wait to see it. He opens the door, and his stomach sinks at the scene in front of him. V realizes then that he might have made the worst decision in his entire life._

\---

The first time Takemura texts V is one month after the man’s return to earth. It is 00:30 am, and he is sitting back in his apartment in Tokyo.

Back, Takemura thought, back home. In his old life, in his sleek, black leather chair in the living room of his luxurious residence. The concept, after those many weeks living in the streets of Night City, still seemed foreign. He thought he had left that behind.

It had been that last meeting with V, back in the orbital station, the one event that disturbed Takemura’s hard-earned peace. Somehow, he kept returning to it. To how the man’s face had fallen when Takemura recounted the bad news; to V’s gaze looking outside the window —in that white, medical _enclosure_ they had lodged the young man in— and into the dark space, circling with his eyes the rotation of planet Earth, all while Takemura had narrated the contents of the “Secure Your Soul” program’s contract.

He kept returning to V’s glassy stare, his uneasy smile as he rejected the offer. The last words they had spoken.

_Got no idea how sweet it is to be free._

That smile had not been mocking, but the more he thought about it, the more he suspected that it had not been one of resignation, either. Not entirely, anyways. It was as if V had finally understood something, and that knowledge brought him happiness, solace.

Takemura did not understand.

Takemura had thought, back then, that it had been the last time that the man named V and himself would meet. He had thought that, after being disappointed by Arasaka, V would not want anything to do with the corporation anymore.

Not even with him, of course.

And as much as that brought… a strange heaviness inside of Takemura’s chest. He respected V’s decision and wished not to bring him any more distress. Not in the final months of his life.

Six months.

It was not much, thought the bodyguard with finality. V and Takemura had met in a hot, Californian summer, right in the beginning of August. If the prognosis proved correct, V’s life would last possibly beyond the snow-white days of February. Right before springtime.

He thought about the pink cherry blossoms of March and May and wondered if V would have enjoyed gazing upon them.

Takemura’s apartment was in almost complete obscurity. High above from the ground level and the illuminated streets of Tokyo, even the lights of the metropolis could scarcely reach him. Under the deep blue of the night all was darkness except for the full moon, leaking between the blinds of the windows.

Takemura materialized, out of one of the inner pockets of his suit’s jacket, the burner phone he had used during his incognito stay at Night City. As he stared at it, Takemura felt it grow heavy in his chromed hand. All this time he had kept the now obsolete device with him, like an amulet of sorts. Burdening, not so much with its physical weight as much as with cumbersome sentimentality, a concept previously alien to the man’s life. Nevertheless, he could not bear to dispose of it.

He had insisted on not thinking about the implications of that course of action.

Takemura closed his hand around the phone and instead chose to focus on the world clock above in his bookcase. He zoomed in with his eye implants at the white of the gadget’s circular case, and then to its hour and minute hands. They stared back at Takemura like the white sclera and black pupils of a cat’s eyes.

It was now 00:36 am in Tokyo, Japan. Takemura moved his gaze unto the next clock of the device, Moscow, and then unto the following one, Paris. Finally, his eyes found the time reference he was looking for, Night City, NUSA.

7:36 am, seventeen hours of difference. So much that both cities almost meet back again. It is early, in Night City. Would Takemura attempt to communicate with V, he would not receive his answer —if V ever wanted to even answer— until some hours later, while Takemura in turn slept.

What would he even say to the man? He pondered the question for a minute. Most of the time, simple was best, thus…

_Greetings, V._

Good. A classical opening is risk-proof. To the next part, then.

_It is me, Goro Takemura._

V meets a lot of people because of his job, and in a city so entwined with Japanese immigration there is a non-zero chance that the merc has been in contact with someone named like him. After all, both his given name and family name were completely normal in Takemura’s homeland.

_From Arasaka._

But with all that had transpired between them it was also possible that V had removed his number from his contact list. If so, the merc might be suspicious of a random message claiming to be from one of Arasaka’s top military operatives talking to him out of nowhere. Some proof, then, might not be uncalled for.

With the burner phone’s front camera, Takemura snaps a picture of himself. With flash.

_It is me… in case you had deleted my contact._

Takemura turned the screen off. The phone’s bright light left his vision —used to only the dim glow of the moon— dazzled with white spots.

So, he had texted V and called for his attention. Good. Now what does he say next? What is the purpose of such a message, so early morning?

_I had been wondering about your health. How have you been since the last time we saw each other?_

That seemed… serviceable, if Takemura said so himself. Efficient, straight to the point… though perhaps a little plain? A closing statement might be needed.

_Best regards_.

That was not as bad as Takemura believed it would be. In fact, now that he had actually done it, he felt pretty nice about himself. Had he known it would be that easy, he would have done so earlier.

He was being hasty, Takemura corrected himself, he still had to wait for V’s reply. The thought left him with a strange itch in the back of his mind.

Takemura inhaled and steeled himself. It was already too late, tomorrow he would have to raise early as always, and such useless thoughts were not needed.

As he walked to his bedroom, he began to undress. On his way out, he pressed a button next to the doorframe, closing the blinds, killing the moonlight.

\---

Takemura woke up at 6:00 am in the morning as was his routine. Before starting the warming exercises for his work-out, Takemura checked his private messages and looked for any significant developments in the last hours.

As he skimmed along his notifications, the ping of a received text ringed through the air. It was not the sound of the messages that were forwarded to him through his net implants. Looking through his left, he saw the burner phone on top of his driftwood night table.

Expectantly, he pressed the power button and, sure enough, V had left a reply. Takemura made some calculations on his head before touching the notification. Seventeen hours, meant… It must be 1 pm of yesterday’s date in Night City.

Takemura logged into his inbox and tapped V’s contact. There, in the chat, he read… a strange, yellow blob face?

The small face had its mouth open wide and tears on its eyes. Takemura’s heart sunk in his chest, had he offended V somehow?

Below he read: _That’s not your best angle Goro!_

What? Was his face so objectionable that it had moved V to tears? He kept reading.

_No, I haven’t deleted your contact. Though I’m flattered you still have mine ;P_

Takemura had no idea what that bizarre mixture of signs was supposed to mean, how did you even begin to pronounce that? But good, this seemed to connote that V was not upset by Takemura’s inquiries about his well-being.

_I’ve been fine Goro, thx for asking. I started feeling better… just as you warned me I would. So, I decided to go and help some friends moving out of Night City, while I still have the energy to lend a hand to someone, y’know?_

Reading that brought a certain… gladness to Takemura’s heart. V seemed to be in a good mood, still finding purpose even after everything.

_How’re things over your side of the ocean? Got back into that Arasaka’s saddle?_

Takemura has no idea what that last part meant, and he makes a memo to look that up later, but it seems the question is suggesting interest in how he is doing back in Japan.

_It is very good to hear that you find yourself in an encouraging state of mind_ , Goro starts to redact. _I myself am pleased by learning you have not stopped pursuing the activities that you previously found fulfilling, it is as you say: “An idle brain is the devil’s workshop.” I hope your friends are appreciative of all your hard work._

He pauses, what is there to say about his own life? With Arasaka-sama’s return, the threats eliminated and Takemura’s reputation reinstated, all was falling into its rightful place.

_As for my life, I have been successfully reintegrated back into my position as Arasaka-sama’s personal bodyguard. In the end, Hanako-sama decided to transfer Oda in my place to Takamatsu and I kept my previous assignments._

_While the waves generated by Yorinobu Arasaka’s treason have yet to still themselves into the company’s previous, absolute order, Arasaka-sama’s return from the dead took all competition completely off-guarded. I expect that in a few more months, Arasaka re-establishes itself in indisputable full power, if not more._

_If it is not bothersome to you, I would like for us to remain in contact like this in case you would require anything. You have done much for me and—_

He backspaces the last part after the period.

_I might not be able to reply immediately, as you know, my job requires nothing but my full attention. This, added to the time zone difference, might make communication complicated. Nonetheless it would be my greatest pleasure to continue hearing about your exploits. Be them what they may._

Now, it was time for an appropriate closing. Something not entirely unpersonal, that recognized the mutual knowledge that V and him had of each other.

_Yours respectfully,_

_Goro Takemura_

Takemura hummed, pleased with himself and his problem-solving skills. He did a quick once-over at the impromptu letter he had written. Still, the exact meaning of the yellow blob that V had sent him eluded Takemura. His ignorance bothered him yet asking about it inside his missive messed with the tone of text. As such, he decided to redirect his inquiry in the form of a _post scriptum_.

_P.S.:_ _What is that hideous yellow face you sent me? Was my face so ugly that it made you cry?_

\---

The phone vibrates once again just as Goro is done with his push-ups.

Quickly, as to not misuse the time of his schedule, he grabs the device from the table and glances at the new messages.

V has now sent him _three_ of those ugly crying faces. _They aren’t sad faces Goro_ , V explains. _They’re laughing faces, as in, you send me something so funny it made me tear up_.

Oh, that is good, Goro supposes. He proceeds with his reading.

V replies to his second paragraph specifically. He tells Takemura that yes, it is great that things are going good at Arasaka, but that if he wanted to know that he would just watch the news. What V wants to know is about Takemura’s life. How does it feel to be back in Japan?

_I demand pics of what this “REAL food” I’ve heard so much about looks like, now that Arasaka’s greatest warrior returns to the emperor’s court._

V was being cheeky with him again, Goro snorts.

Takemura snaps a photo of his breakfast: onigiri with grilled salmon; and sends them to V. In turn, he writes that he expects V to teach him how to send the “little faces” from his phone, too.

\---

For the following days, V and Goro correspond semi-periodically.

V tells him that he is helping his nomad friends, the Aldecaldos, to settle somewhere new across the border. V sends him a picture of the desert, sandy brown extending all the way the eye can see, contrasting with the clear blue of the sky.

_Do you enjoy nature?_ asks Goro.

_When I was a kid, I used to think it was boring, but after living in Night City for so long… I rescind all my previous complaints_.

Goro snaps a picture of the Miso soup he is eating with the internal camera of his augmented eyes and forwards it to V. And if anybody in the resting lounge where security takes their lunch sees a sudden flash appearing and disappearing in Saburo Arasaka’s private bodyguard’s eyes, they know better than to mention it.

_Fuck, that does look good_ , answers V.

_It tastes good too_ , Takemura quips immediately.

_I’ll see what roadkill the folks at the kitchen picked up for tonight and then we’ll talk_.

V shoots a photo of himself and a sunset on the hood of his black, four-door pickup truck. The skies flushed in red and purple colors and on the blue margins of the image, a few stars began to rear their heads.

_Beautiful_ , replies Takemura.

From his apartment, Goro takes a picture of the dawn in the metropolis of Tokyo, though he finds himself missing the simple beauty of V’s natural landscape. Without the manmade skyline in view.

_Not bad_ , V texts him some hours later.

Goro rolls his eyes and sends him one of the little yellow faces. An angry one.

V sends Takemura a pic of him in some dusty rocks, labeled “me with a funny lizard.” Said lizard eyeing the man warily as V squats next to it.

_They are called “iguanas”_ , Goro corrects him.

_I know what an iguana is, Goro_. And Takemura smiles, pleased with himself for finally out-snarking the smartass.

\---

One day V shares with him a pic around a bonfire. At V’s sides he can see a gathering of many different individuals wearing outlandish combinations of clothing.

They all seem content. Happy, even.

A large man holds an acoustic guitar, his face fixed in a passionate display of singing, right next to him is the focal point of the image: V on the lap of a beautiful dark-skinned woman sitting in a folding chair. One hand on her beer and her other arm around V’s waist. V is trying to press an exaggerated kiss on her cheek while the woman laughs and tries in vain to slip away from his grasp.

Objectively it is a funny picture… by American standards anyways. Yet, somehow, the idea of V and the woman sharing a relationship results… not exactly shocking. Perhaps, simply unexpected. Which is ridiculous because V is a handsome man. An attractive man. Objectively, of course. So, it should not be surprising that he is enjoying the more… sensuous aspects of life in the time he has left.

The time he has left, Takemura repeats. And his mind fills with dark realization at the somber thought.

Instead of any of that, he writes: _Pretty woman. Is she your girlfriend?_

_Who? Panam?! God, no. She’d eat me for breakfast and spit my bones CLEAN._

Goro hums to himself in understanding, any relief this information brings him is inconsequential.

\---

Almost a month after Takemura and V had talked for the first time, V sends Takemura a pic of him wearing a short rally jacket. The Aldecaldos insignia shining bright on top of the black leather.

_What do you think?!_

_Well… it certainly makes an impression_.

Was it really a “jacket” if it did not cover past the ribs?

_Haha, very funny dumbass_. _The Aldecaldos gave it to me, they officially made me part of their family_ _:)_

Goro feels a pang of guilt at his previous comment.

_That is great to hear, V. What was the occasion for such a gift?_

_We’ve successfully met the Aldecaldos contacts in the Snake Nation. Once the gang's all settled in, my job here is done_.

Takemura asks V what his next move will be, the merc responds to him that first, they will throw a big party and then, secondly, they have some contacts in the area that can fly him back close to Night City.

To assuage the accidental insensitiveness of his previous impasse, Takemura writes: _For what is worth, you look far more well-dressed than I do this early in the morning_. Using his Kiroshi implants, he snaps a pic of himself in the personal gym of his apartment’s mirror.

It is him, sweaty and disheveled, dumbbell in hand, after a workout. Dirty and without any of his elegant suits, Goro believes to have sent one hardly flattering image.

Takemura has no way of knowing, but that selfie of himself in his gym wear —the gray tank top showing his new chrome implants and toned arms, the low rise, black gym shorts leaving his muscled legs in plain view— would nearly cause V’s synapses to short-circuit from almost 5000 miles away.

\---

It is as Takemura finishes his round across Arasaka-sama’s domicile —scanning the mansion, checking on his men positions and their reports— that the bodyguard and Hanako-sama’s paths intersect, just as she exits her father’s office.

For an instant, their gazes meet. And it takes less than a second for Takemura to discern the small tears threatening to spill from the woman’s eyes.

“Hanako-sama,” Takemura says, perhaps in a more hurried tone that he meant. He bows stiffly and pronouncedly. He is ashamed, as if he had committed an indiscretion by witnessing the lady’s mask falter for a moment.

“Takemura-san,” she answers, her voice calm and collected, “at rest, please.”

When Takemura raises his eyes to meet hers, she has regained her composure. Every sign of the previous outburst had disappeared in its entirety, as if it had been the man’s imagination playing tricks on him.

“Is there anything I can offer my assistance with, my lady?”

Hanako gives her a short, polite smile. “It is nothing to worry yourself with, I assure you.”

She pauses, weighting the pros and cons of releasing a confession currently resting inside her throat.

“Is just that… I do find myself missing my brother, from time to time, and my father, too, every so often.”

“Your father, Hanako-sama?” asks Takemura. He did not follow, was Arasaka-sama not sitting there in the adjacent room they were standing next to?

“Yes, Takemura-san,” her lips form a tight straight line. One that, elusive, relaxes itself into dissonant serenity not a moment after. “I do not know yet who I grieve the most for.”

Hanako bows slightly and makes an exit towards the opposite direction that Takemura was walking.

“He is awaiting you,” she utters when they pass each other. Her voice sweet and empty of all emotion, like a hollow wind chime.

Takemura turns around and enters the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: this is not going to become a texting fic because i hate those  
> also me: writes 30 pages of mostly texting
> 
> Did You Know: Originally chapter 1 and 2 were only one whole chapter but I decided to split them to make the reading more amenable.
> 
> Also, I know that this fic starts light-hearted but I'm warning you, this ride is going to get progressively more angsty as we carry on.


	2. November-January

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Possible TW: In the cut after the surfing photo and before the thanksgiving one there's a narration that concerns itself with Takemura thinking about the implications of Saburo using his son's body to have sex. It is brief and doesn't go in detail, but for anybody heavily triggered by possible implications of/dubious analogies to parental abuse, loss of autonomy and even sexual abuse the topic may strike them as deeply uncomfortable.
> 
> Please stay safe, ilu!!

_Both of you wait at the rooftop of the unfinished building for the takeout to arrive. You wanted a pizza and he wanted sushi, so you compromise and search for a place that sells both. To his surprise you find one, but you know the city well by now and know that whatever unholy combination of things you can think, somebody in Night City is selling it to some freak._

_In the meantime, the voice inside your head, the one that is not you, tells you to push Him off the balcony. This voice isn’t evil and isn’t the devil, the devil is somebody else and he doesn’t live in your head._

_The order of pizza and sushi arrives. The soy sauce has spilled over the pizza, this is gross even for you. You eat in silence. A cat-spirit appears, and it foretells misfortune, it wouldn’t be the first time. He and you talk about the living dead, about your childhoods, about the things you’ve sold your souls for._

_He believes this is the best of possible worlds. A part of you, neighbor of the voice in your head, wants to cry. This is the part that watched sunsets at your dad's side; the part that waded through fields of cacti, collecting flowers to give to your mom; the one that raced your bike through the glimmering sand with your eyes closed —to feel the wind against your hair better. The part that tells you that the world could be better. That it could be beautiful._

_Because why not? How hard can it be? When you were a kid you built castles out of cardboard boxes, once upon a time._

_“That’s right,” says the voice in your head. “It’s the moment you stop hoping for better when the devil gets you.”_

\---

It has been two months since V left the orbital station on the moon and two days since their last shared conversation, when Goro Takemura receives a message from V.

Attached to it is a mundane picture of nothing at all, the seats of a plane. Taken from the middle of the row, V’s vanishing point manages to capture such sights as an overweight man drooling in a white, synthetic pillow in his sleep and a tired woman by the window seat calming down a crying child.

_Is that your ticket to Night City?_ asks Goro.

_My ticket into Seattle, actually_. _I called my friend Judy and she told me she’d show me the sights_.

Some days later, Goro is presented with a picture of V accompanied by a young woman with brightly colored hair. Judy, he presumes. Both wear wetsuits and carry scuba diving gear. They stand, next to each other, at the edge of a gray colored beach on a gray day, smiling widely. As if just before they had been told the world’s funniest joke. Clowning around, arms wrapped around each other's shoulder, the young woman holds a peace sign above the crown of V’s head, a gesture that V returns with a lopsided attempt of his own. They look childish. They look happy.

It is 1 am in Japan, where Takemura is. He has not yet gone to sleep; he cannot lull himself into it. Goro receives the photograph with a bottle of beer in hand —a habit once upon a time he would have found disgraceful— and nothing worthy of showing in turn.

He answers: _You both seem to be having fun. I suppose the young lady next to you is your friend Judy?_

If the photo had just been taken, it should be around 8 in the morning where V is. It would explain the silver color of the sky, at least.

If that is so, then V will probably see Goro’s reply many hours later, when out of the waters of the pacific coast. A feeling of unease washes inside of him at the image of V floating directionless amidst the dark ocean’s depths.

_Be careful that dancing around the currents does not get you swallowed by the waves._

He turns off the lights of the kitchen, returning to the blackness of his room. For an undetermined amount of time, Goro drifts into and out of sleep, his consciousness sailing like flotsam into the night.

\---

During the next few days, Goro would receive plenty of pictures of a variety of things: a vermillion starfish, many photos picturing trees that the desert nomad had never seen, images of a movie marathon of those brainless _Bushido_ films, and so on.

In one of them, there is V on top of a surfboard. His wetsuit open, worn only up to the man’s hips. The orange light of the sun scatters around the water, curving around the rather small wave that V is attempting to ride. His knees are tense, and his eyes are focused only on where the board is moving. Takemura assumes that the pic was taken by Judy or somebody else.

Goro takes his time to appreciate the image, the color, the composition, the vividness in V’s expression… he pauses a moment on V’s well-defined abdomen. Takemura had known of course that being in good physical shape was crucial for somebody in V’s line of business: all that running, sneaking around and the constitution required to endure and inflict much violence.

It still was… something to appreciate too. The transmutation of skill into the human physique, he said to himself. Yes. The inherent beauty of human anatomy. Yes.

_Do you know how to surf?_ Asks Takemura.

_No, I’m just learning actually. Slow progress, but I’m not about to give up_.

Learning? Takemura almost does not manage to stop himself from physically scoffing at the message. He was incredulous, the idea that V was still finding time to learn new things when he—

When he was dying. Just a few months from now.

Something stirs deep inside of Takemura. He ponders what is the dark feeling spreading, like poison ivy, little by little around his heart. It stinged, to think about V’s death, weighted more grave than other of his previous encounters with human mortality. Perhaps because this time Death’s arrival had been announced with a date. It was scheduled, official. And the wait for it filled him with dread.

Death was a fact of life, much more present in a profession such as theirs. For men such as them. Yet Takemura found himself pondering the topic keenly with each passing day, diving well into its dark depths. The more he thought about it, the colder the grip around his lungs, his chest, his heart felt. Goro knew that if he kept descending into that stream of consciousness, he would find himself face to face with something that he once had mercifully forgotten about.

But it was also something else, something that ached like a burn. A resentment of sorts. To his surprise, Goro thought that it might have been jealousy.

He remembers the emotion, back from when he was a child in Chiba-11, and he saw the older kids be picked away into their new lives to be corposoldiers.

But why?

Why would V’s photographs awaken this primitive, childish feeling inside of him? What is there to be envious about the merc’s life? He was actively, inexorably _dying_ with each passing moment.

Takemura glances at the clock, it was already 8:00 am. He had work to do.

As the morning light bathed his room, Goro compartmentalized and moved on.

\---

Outside the doors of the man’s private chambers, Takemura reflects about Arasaka-sama’s change in demeanor after he started inhabiting his son’s body. About how his current position, guarding the bedroom where Arasaka-sama’s was fucking some expensive joytoy, would have been unthinkable a few months ago.

Since his return to the land of the living, Arasaka-sama’s mood had, from a certain point of view, improved. Intoxicated in the vitality of his new body, he made more public appearances, he even smiled more —a terrifying show of teeth that reminded Takemura more of a tiger about to pounce unto its prey than anything else— and indulged himself in new-found appetites.

Takemura thinks about Arasaka-sama using the body of his son, his genitals, to fuck. It makes the hair in Takemura’s neck rise and his stomach recoil in disgust, which he placates in shameful anger the moment he recognizes the sensation arising. It was not his position to throw judgments to Arasaka-sama of all people. Besides, Yorinobu had been a traitor —an enemy— and he had died like one. Pity was unfitting for a snake like him.

Behind his back, he can hear the crescendo sounds of the bed trembling under the weight of his occupants, the loud rutting noises that Yorino— Arasaka-sama makes as he, Takemura deduces, finishes.

Takemura needs to steel himself before swallowing the lump forming in his throat. It rolls heavy, like a shot put, down to his stomach.

\---

In another photo, Judy and V are gathered around a big dinner table filled with various aluminum recipients of food that Goro can not recognize. Rounding the two young adults is an elderly couple, their heads various shades of gray and silver. Every member of the gathering grinned at the camera. A message was attached with the image, it read: _Happy thanksgiving from the Alvarez + V_.

He vaguely recognizes the holiday. When he was still a young cadet at Arasaka’s private military, he and the other recruits had once watched an ancient film where a student took care of a blind retired army lieutenant over the course of a Thanksgiving weekend.

_That is the one with the turkey, yes?_ sent Takemura.

It was V who had snapped the shot. In the left corner of his screen, Goro could see the inkling of a finger as V extended his arms to show both the table and the diners.

Many hours later, V replies.

_More like the synthetic turkey-flavored meat, realistically, but yeah_.

\---

That night, Goro thinks about the holidays back in the academy. In his youth, all the other boys would take their leaves on New Year or Golden Week and go back to their families, their girlfriends. Not Goro. Goro wanted to succeed, so he stayed at base and studied, and did his exercises like any other day.

His superiors found his dedication exemplary and told him so.

With time, one would think that his fellow cadets would stop trying to invite him to go out on the town with them. And they did, all except one —what was his name again? The one that went MIA, many years later. Goro rubs his left temple as he tries to remember and— _Kazuhiko_ , his brain jolts electric.

The boy with the tanned calves and the crooked smile, with the toned arms that looked like small hills. He would always try for Goro to come with him and the others. One time, Kazuhiko would invite him to spend the holidays with his family. He had probably thought of Takemura as lonely. Goro had almost said yes. But he refused.

Goro had nothing waiting back home, this was a blessing in disguise. It was more reason to move forward.

He could not stop now only to attach himself to useless things. As long as he remained unfaltering, he would never lack anything ever again.

\---

Few days later, Goro received a message from V by midnight.

_Hey Goro, mind if I call you for a moment?_

Puzzling. What would V want to call him for? Takemura looked around his bedroom, as if there was someone in the house that could spy their conversation. A ridiculous thought. Takemura mused that he was really getting old.

It would be the first time in months that he would listen to V’s voice. To imagine that filled him with a strange sense of unease, as if they were committing a breach of trust. Harming who Takemura did not know.

_No V, please do_ , Takemura texted back.

Takemura turned on the lights and laid in wait for a minute, sitting on his bed. A sense of dread slipped slowly inside of him, and he considered —but not seriously— not answering.

Out of the left corner of his vision, a small window popped up with a ringing sound. Inside of it, he could see V’s call sign: a single, majuscule letter “V” in what Takemura could only describe as a garish, vaguely cowboy font with a pair of white, angel wings at the sides. He accepted the call.

V’s image appeared on screen, he looked like himself. Deceptively healthy, even. Behind him, Takemura could see a black row of uncomfortable airport chairs. The big glass window at the distance gave way to the concrete runway where an airplane was landing, a grey morning shone bright above his head.

“Hey, Goro,” V’s said. “Long time no see.”

“Hello V,” greeted Takemura. “It certainly has.”

“How’re you holding up? You look pretty good,” and Goro saw the man doing a once-over of his appearance. It was the act of shamelessly examining him that seized him by surprise. He hoped the grainy quality of the airport’s wi-fi would fail to show the creeping flush that was slowly moving towards Goro’s own face. It is annoyance, he said to himself, irritation at the American’s brazen impropriety.

“Look at you,” said V in a playful tone, “with those black threads of yours. Seems you’re doin’ pretty nicely, don’t ya?”

“Ah, I cannot complain, my friend,” and Goro mentally reeled himself back in. It was the first time since both had met that Goro had explicitly called the other man a ‘friend’. And was he not, after all that had happened? What other meaning had the ensuing exchanges through the phone?

As Takemura brought himself out of his reverie, he looked at V staring at him quizzically. Goro cursed himself internally and, before he could make the awkward lapse in the conversation even longer, he said, “You do not look bad yourself, merc. How have you been ‘holding up’?” Returning the question.

“Me?” V pursed his lips, and Goro watched the gesture intently, “I guess —y’know, I guess I’ve been fine. Given the circumstances, I mean.”

Goro hummed affirmatively.

“The truth is that I think I’d just… checked out on the whole ‘dying’ thing,” he snorted. “I mean, I was very aware of it. Though I suppose… I hadn’t actually considered,” he takes a deep breath, “how it may affect others.”

V looks to the side, hard. Goro, in turn, studies the profile of the man. His textured undercut, the skin of his ears hardened by the sun and air, the cyberware lines that go through his eyes and cheekbones. Those artificial scars on V’s face had always reminded Goro of two parallel streams of tears. He could not imagine having them, to look so openly vulnerable while trudging through the world and its people.

“Judy dropped me at the airport. And when we were —y’know— saying our goodbyes. She just started crying.”

  
Ah, so this was what was all about, thought Takemura.

V smiles, it is a bittersweet thing. “Since I met her, Judy always gave the impression of wearing her heart on her sleeve. Sensitive, y’know?”

Goro did not say anything, just nodded.

“I always liked that about her. That and the way she cared about other people. One of her best qualities, I think.”

“An impulse like that can kill you on the battlefield,” said Goro, maybe just to say something. To distract V before that glassy stare of his turns into something else, even if the moment he opens his mouth he wants to take it back.

“Yeah, maybe. But I liked that,” and V looks up to the ceiling, as if searching for guidance. “Perhaps too much,” he confesses with a shaky breath.

“V…” said Goro, but before he could mention anything else, the merc interrupted him.

“Just before that I told her to fly to Night City, one of these months, maybe. ‘Fore the illness… really settled in.”

V runs his hand through his mouth, there is no sadness in his eyes now. And Goro is reminded of Hanako-sama, and how quickly she had regained her composure. How both of them had refused to accept the tears, an admission of defeat.

Perhaps what V had liked about Judy so much, was how unafraid she seemed of being hurt by others.

“But I think she realized that —it was probably the last time we would… ever be able to take a trip like the one we just had.”

V exhales something heavy, but he appears calmer.

“Truth is,” V confesses, “I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to confront them —my friends, I mean. I don’t want to cause them any pain.”

Goro’s mind flashes an image of blue over black. The color of a bruise.

“And Panam?” asked Goro, and V looked at him as if he was surprised that Goro would even remember that. He opened his mouth rapidly once or twice, Goro spoke anyways, “How did she… react when you were with her.”

V chuckles as he reminisces, his voice changes back to his characteristic tough tone, “She hugged me with one arm, behind my neck, straightened my back and said, with the driest and most resolute tone of voice I’ve heard in my entire life, ‘You’re my brother V. Always remember that.’”

Unaware, Goro’s lips transform into a half-grin, “That woman… tough as nails, as your people say.”

“You’ve got _no_ idea, Goro.”

And he knows that it is a cultural difference, but hearing V calling him by his given name so candidly makes him feel an emotion he cannot quite put his finger on. He huffs. He decides that it is not an unpleasant one, at the very least.

“In the end, all we are V, are the memories we imprint on others.”

V says nothing. Does not look at him, through him, if anything.

“What about you Goro? Am I a good memory to you?”

Takemura pauses, he does not think, not exactly. He just waits, measures the silence between them, inside his own mind. He’s transported into a hot summer day, a lifetime ago, when he was a child. When he had explored an abandoned building, dark and moist and ruinous, looking to find the sound of a cicada. A gift to his grandmother. Who had, herself, last listened to their call the summer she left the country to marry his grandfather. It was the same expectant silence.

“Yes,” he said, “you make up for a fine one indeed.”

In the background of V’s video, he can see a plane descend from the cloudy skies.

\---

A week after their telephone call, V sends him a text. No image attached. The message tells Goro about how fortuitous V’s decision to, finally, return to Night City was. Three days later, V had fallen sick with a strong fever that, even after its subsequent cure, had left the merc permanently tired. For now, Goro reads, V’s plans are to just relax and spend the holidays with his loved ones.

_Is there any snow in Japan?_ V asks him.

_Before the most devastating effects of global warming, it used to snow all around the country during December up to even February. Now, most of the overpopulated cities rarely see anything beyond a thin layer of frost._

_Too bad, I’ve never seen snow IRL. No such thing in Cali_ , V confesses.

Never? Takemura wondered to himself.

_In the more remote regions of Japan —especially up north, near Hokkaido— the Siberian winds still freeze the air enough for a veritable snowfall_.

_Hmm_ , answered V. _If a Xmas miracle happens and it DOES snow where you live, send me a pic, ok?_

The following days it would not, as predicted, snow in Tokyo. During the meantime, V delivers photos to Takemura’s inbox with such a regularity that Goro now expects to receive them and go through them as he reads the newspaper and watches the morning’s news. All part of the schedule.

Faces of people Goro has not ever met become familiar as they begin to appear even more periodically than before. The older man decides to take the bait and ask him about what his story with these individuals is.

With time and exposure, he learns to recognize some of them. V attaches an image of Mama Welles —V’s partner Jackie’s mother— and their mutual friends all eating around a table full of Mexican dishes; a snapshot of River —a detective which V helped— and him having a barbecue at a trailer park with the former’s nephews and sister; a photo of Viktor —V’s ripperdoc— and the merc doing yoga —badly and painfully, if Goro gauged their expression correctly— as per Misty’s, Jackie’s girlfriend, request (she is the only one smiling).

And if V looks gaunter than in his first pictures, neither Goro nor V say anything.

In another, the pic shows V sitting around on beach chairs with a handsome blond man, his arms full of tattoos, at the edge of a cerulean pool. Both are doing the devil’s horns gesture with their hands and making matching expressions with their faces, sticking the tongue out. V wears tight, neon red swimming trunks while the other man sports a simple, black thong.

The caption reads: _Can you believe Kerry’s whole-ass pool can heat up like a jacuzzi??_

And if Goro's eyes remain fixed on the two men more than he would ever admit to himself it is only because he can vaguely recognize V’s friend.

_Kerry? Is he not a rockstar, or am I wrong?_

_Yeah. That’s a funny story, y’know the Us Cracks idol group?_ V asks in turn.

_The “PONPON” whatever?_

_Exactly_.

_Ah, the peddlers of horrifying cacophonies, yes._

_He hired me to plant a grenade in their instruments truck_.

_I can sympathize_.

\---

During the third week of December, V sends Goro photos of Misty, Viktor and himself lighting the first candle of Misty’s menorah in her shop. During those days, more images —of V and Misty spinning a strange toy (“a dreidel”) on the floor; of him and Viktor eating chocolate coins on the sofa— would be sent on his way.  
  
By the end of the fourth week, Goro receives a pic of V and officer River, dressed in Santa hats, giving away presents for the latter’s family. The mom and the kids, even the goth looking teenager in crutches, seem merry. They pose with their presents to the camera.

The photo reads: _Happy holidays, Goro_.

Two days or so later, V sends Takemura a snapshot of him petting a scrawny sphinx cat on his lap, the animal appears to be asleep. The message attached to the image says: _Bakeneko_.

_Does it bring bad luck?_

_She brought me a rat, once_.

_Ah_ , texted Goro wisely, _a gift. Perhaps a maneki-neko, then_.

_Hold on, I have to look up something_.

For about ten seconds, Goro awaits.

_Ok, NOW I can say that you made a funny comment_ , replies V.

V sends him another picture of his cat, now with her large yellow eyes open.

_What is her name?_

_Nibbles_.

Takemura scoffs.

_An unfitting name for such an elegant creature!_

_Ok, when you get your own you can call yours whatever you want._

And he adds: _I bet you’d name your cat like a samurai from 3000 years ago, anyways_.

Takemura is about to reply, offended, and argue on how _noble_ sounding such a name would be, until he zooms in and realizes that he can count the ribs of the little creature.

_And SO skinny too!! V are you sure that you are feeding the maneki-neko well enough?_

_Hey old man, you should’ve seen what this little fleabag looked when I found her eating in the trash!! I’m a responsible pet owner_.

_Poor thing_ , adds Takemura with finality.

_I’m pretty sure I saw her eating a roach. Couldn’t leave her like that, us strays gotta stay together_.

And the last phrase echoes through his mind until Goro loses himself in sleep.

\---

The 30th of December, V asks Goro if he has anything planned for the New Year. Goro replies that in Japan, celebrations start the 1st of January. Because those are national holidays, Arasaka organizes a gala on the 31st where only the most notorious of Japan’s elite are invited.

Goro has his hands full overseeing all the security of the event. He sends V a snap of people going back and forth installing tables, chairs, dishware, and cutlery inside a golden ballroom with crystal chandeliers.

_I see you are partying hard at Arasaka, try not to get TOO wasted_ , advices V.

_I remind you that I am here as security, and I am not allowed to drink on the job_.

_A good reason to not get TOO wasted_.

Hours later, Takemura is standing in the background as Saburo Arasaka gives a short speech to the guests. His words tell a story about unexpected changes, the trials and tribulations of last year, of the strength and perseverance necessary to see them through, of rebirth and the sharp steel of a blade tempered over raging fire.

On the corner of Goro’s eye, a notification pops up: _How’s the future looking, Goro?_

He does not answer, it is not the time. Instead, he looks forward, eyes fixed on the crowd as he scans them. Saburo Arasaka finishes his speech and sits accompanied by roaring applause.

Through the many monitors installed around the room, sounds of bells start to fill the air. Goro closes his eyes for one moment and prays this year’s sins to disappear, just like the faraway echoes of the temple melt under the night. He listens to the last bell, ringing past midnight.

\---

After New Year’s week, many days go by without any news from V.

This disconcerts Goro, but only slightly. The next weeks of January would proceed in hectic pace, Arasaka-sama’s seeking nothing but the complete resumption of progress after last year’s setbacks.

By January’s third Wednesday, V’s silence is broken with a long message:

_Goro, how have you been? I’m sorry about ghosting you the last couple of days, I’m afraid things have taken a turn for the worse for me. These last few weeks I’ve been driven around from the hospital to my pad and from my pad to the hospital enough times that I get motion sickness when I’m not in a car. Been getting some exams done._

_Long-story short: my health has gotten real bad. Vik tells me I have to start taking it easy, stop exerting myself like I used to._ _The good news, I got new wheels:_

Attached to the next message there’s a photo of a powered wheelchair.

_I can still move by myself, don’t worry. It’s just in case I get too tired before reaching where I want to be._

_Asides from THAT, there’s not a lot going on with my life. Friends come and go from my place mostly. Judy’s been staying at my place since this week, and I’ve been texting Panam too, as of late._

_Anyways, hope you’re doing okay. And that old man Saburo hasn’t been breathing down your neck too hard._

When Goro reaches the end of the message, he realizes he held his breath through its entire length. He holds the phone in his hand even when the screen goes dark after waiting for its user input for too long. Once the light of the device has left him too, Goro looks around his bedroom. It is sparse, spartan even. Stylishly minimalist to a fault.

Besides his bed, the only furniture he has are the two nightstands on each side of the mattress; the long, flat TV fixed to the wall opposite of bed; under the TV screen, a horizontal dresser that doubles as a bookcase —though none of the drawers hold any clothes; two bedside lamps and his closet which —though ample in size— is mostly unused and built as an empty space —disguised by a sliding door— inside the wall.

The only things that he has occupying space that were not strictly functional are the small, traditional tea table, the matching tea set and the two jet black cushions to sit around it in front of the bed.

What had first attracted him to the apartment had been the same reason for why it was so costly: an ample space with high ceilings, sold to him as ready to be filled with lavish decorations and myriad of objects. Takemura had not been interested in any of that. Instead, he had tried to cultivate a visually quiet space, free from distractions. Chosen to let a muted palette of colors —grays, blacks, whites and beiges— to surround him.

He had kept the moody wooden floors in the hallways and kitchen and had the living room and resting areas lined with traditional straws of tatami mats.

It was the first time that Takemura had ever experienced the vacant space between the objects and himself as negative. As desolate. Takemura was suddenly and intimately aware by how alone he was in his house. Only midnight and the distant halo of the city’s electric lights accompanied him.

Takemura does not know what to reply to V’s message. What could he say that was useful? Meaningful beyond platitudes? When he had first communicated V of the fatal state of his condition, he had said that he was sorry, which he had been. There was something deeply sorrowful about telling someone that death was indeed ready for you, no matter how you may distract yourself from it. Now? He had no words to describe what he was feeling, much less something that could console V and be faithful to Takemura’s emotions at the same time.

He pressed his teeth together until they hurt, then he felt something acidic rise up his throat. He was angry, he realized, or something similar. Angry at the other man's stupidity at rejecting Arasaka’s offer to become an engram; at his foolhardiness, at his attempt of levity as he was dying and, over everything else, angry at the fact that it angered him. Takemura silently cursed Johnny Silverhand’s name, unfairly, as if he were the whole culprit of their miseries —a fact that Takemura knew as unreasonable, which made him _even more_ angry.

Why? Why was this event setting him off like that? What was that infuriating quality that V had that could always get the better of him?

He closed his eyes and tried to center himself again. He breathed in eight seconds and exhaled ten, he did that set of exercises thrice until the pulsing veins of his temple receded. He found in himself no clarity on how to reply to V’s confession, and ignorant of the way forward from there.

Defeated, he wrote: _I am very sorry to hear that. Please do share any new developments_.

\---

During the course of the week, Takemura receives a photo of V and Judy watching old cowboy movies on TV, of Vik and V on wheelchairs shooting hoops in a basketball court whose colors are almost completely faded against the grey concrete.

He does not reply to them. Instead of that, Goro deliberates his options. Ruminates on an offer he had made to V, long ago during different circumstances. On one hand, V’s health will decline drastically and there is no guarantee that Arasaka-sama will look to his petition with good eyes —a prospect that Takemura can say in no uncertain terms that he is _afraid_ of. Afraid of being alone in a room with Arasaka-sama as he verbally tears him apart, just as his bodyguard has seen him do many times before to others. Afraid of being a disappointment.

On the other hand, V is dying. And unlike his employer, he is not coming back.

He decides to start with the easy —easier— part first. Takemura opens his phone and writes:

_Remember when I told you to come visit me in Kagawa? Before Oda was transferred instead of me?_

_Yeah_ , answers V from his side of the world.

_Would you still like to?_

_Would I still like to what?_

_Would you like to visit Japan?_

_With me_ , he adds for clarity’s sake.

\---

“Arasaka-sama, may I speak with you for a moment?”

Yorinobu Arasaka lifts his gaze from the computer screen, it is his head that nods. It is Saburo Arasaka, the one who replies.

“Speak.”

“Sir, if it is not a bold request, I would like to ask for the stipulated paid leave in my contract. I would like to take care of the health of a close friend of mine. A fellow brother-in-arms.”

Goro knew what he was putting on the line here. Never in the many decades since his conscription into Arasaka’s corporate army had Takemura ever used his mandatory annual leave. It had been that single-minded devotion to his work one of the defining traits that Goro prided himself off in offering to the Arasaka Corporation.

“A brother-in-arms, you say?”

“Yes, Arasaka-sama.”

“I was not aware you had any close relationships,” replies the man, matter-of-factly. Saburo turns away from his subordinate, towards the transparent panel of glass behind of him.

Disconcertingly, Saburo’s answer leaves a bitter taste in Goro’s mouth. One that Goro takes no time to gulp down, lest he lose focus.

“It is the man known as ‘V’, sir. I am sure you have already read the reports. His help was fundamental in frustrating Yorinobu-sama’s takeover and in successfully securing Dr. Hellman’s reinstatement in our engineering team.”

He swallows before continuing.

“And in coming to my rescue against the Taka Faction’s strike team by himself. Aid without which I would not be here today.”

“The mercenary that helped you. I see,” Saburo stops looking through the window to the city, expanding all the way to the horizon, below. With an imperceptible movement, his chair rotates to its initial position. Once again, he speaks with Takemura face to face.

“Picked up a stray while staying in Night City, Takemura-san?” Saburo tells the other man with the most subtle of smirks.

Goro can feel cold perspiration starting to form in his underarms. It is a testimony of the man’s resolve and trained composure that his hand remains steady at his side. Had he offended Arasaka-sama in some way?

“Arasaka-sama, I—”

“At ease, Takemura-san. I was merely provoking you.”

And Takemura curses his own undisciplined mind for giving him the tenebrous image of a cat toying with a mouse between its claws.

“Is this friend of yours in grave condition?”

Did he truthfully not remember? Or was Arasaka-sama testing him in some way?

“I am afraid he is in the last stages of the terminal disease.”

The right corner of Saburo’s lips quirk, it lasts less than a second. An inner smile. What does Arasaka-sama find so amusing? Ponders Goro. Is it death? A problem of the past for someone like him?

“Will you be leaving Japan?”

“No, Arasaka-sama. He will come to Japan, and I will receive him at my home. As his host.”

Saburo hums.

“You have changed, Takemura-san. Those few weeks in the streets of Night City… they changed you. Slightly, but it is there.”

Goro would like to reply, but nothing comes from his barely opened mouth. Truly, he does not know a response that could satisfy the other man.

“But I suppose that is inevitable,” Saburo continues, Goro exhales a breath that he did not realize he was holding. “Our ordeals in Night City have changed all of us, have they not?”

Yorinobu’s eyes stare at him expectantly.

“They have, Arasaka-sama.”

“Indeed. And you have been loyal, Takemura-san. Steadfast and unrelenting in our time of reckoning, you deserve a distraction.”

_A distraction_ , Goro repeats on his head. Somehow, something small and hot, like a single piece of burning coal, lights up in his interior. It is not a fire, not yet. But it exists. The waiting embers of _rancor_. Goro does not know this, has not yet identified the unfamiliar sensation —had he ever experienced it? And thus, he does not quite suppress it. He hides it, puts a lid to that flickering emotion and leaves it to either burn itself out or illuminate faintly the dark interiors of his heart.

“Twenty days, Takemura-san, starting tomorrow. As stipulated by your contract,” Saburo smiles in a completely mirthless way. “Do with them as you see fit.”

“Thank you, Arasaka-sama.”

“If that would be all, I have business to attend to. Be on your way.”

Goro bows, takes his leave, and resumes his position outside Saburo’s door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> takemura: google does my boss thinks im gay  
> saburo: google how do i tell my bodyguard idc if he has sex with other men
> 
> Fun Fact: The "ancient" movie that Goro and his buddies watched at the academy was "Scent of a Woman" (1992).
> 
> The next chapter should be ready by the end of the week, ideally. Funnily enough it was the part that I wanted to write when making this fic but possibly the shortes in comparison to the "how do we get there" that are this two chapters. This fic has been suuuch a learning experience for me and I have a lot to talk about its development. This was my first time doing a chaptered, more traditional (though short) narrative so
> 
> Also about the next chapter, still in early development but I'm weighing my options about the smut. I've never written anything like that and I know that the writing sex can be... daunting. So. If I opt for a "fade to black" in the chapter but you guys are interested enough with how the whole thing went, I'll do my best to add that missing scene inside the series. The other option is making a shorter, more evocative description of sex and the way it characterizes Goro and V. Both of this possibilities have merits and both would challenge me in different ways so I'm excited to tackle them. Just for you to know.
> 
> EDIT: I lied, the fic now has four chapters. rip @myself
> 
> If you see any edits, it's me looking for grammar mistakes. English prepositions were made in hell.


	3. February

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Goro and V begin their roadtrip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goro: i don't want to make this weird for V
> 
> Narrator: little did he know that it was exactly what V wanted

_“Fucking failure,” said Smasher in his inhumane voice. Jarring, like scrapping metal together._

_Smasher lifted the monstrous leg that he had kept behind him as it grew tenser and tenser like a spring and kicked Takemura. The bodyguard managed to avoid it, though not completely, getting hit in the chest with its heel._

_V saw Goro be ejected, as if hit by a truck, several feet in the air at a stupefying speed before becoming embedded into the wall. Had Smasher foot connected fully, V truly believed that the other man could have been literally eviscerated by the force._

_Takemura groaned in pain and started to drag himself up from the crater he left on the wall —nanomachines in his system quickly mending the broken tissues and spreading painkillers throughout his body— but it was much too slow. Using his own version of the Kerenzikov, Smasher dashed forward and, with just extending his hand, began to crush Goro inside the hole once more._

_When Takemura was finally backed against the bottom of the opening, Smasher tightened the mechanical grip of his arms around his throat. Gradually, he dragged Takemura up through the surface of the broken wall, its debris digging sharply against the bodyguard’s back._

_“I’m going to enjoy making those pretty eyes of yours pop,” threatened Smasher and Takemura could read no expression in the cyborg’s misshapen face, all signifiers of emotion covered in bulbous implants like metallic sores. Only the distorted voice of the juggernaut communicated the hideous, blood-curling interior of Smasher’s heart._

_Slowly but surely, he started to tighten the grip around Takemura’s throat with the heavy efficiency of a hydraulic press. Goro squirmed under the colossus' arms, vainly trying to use his martial training to connect strategic hits around Smasher’s abdomen, but it was as useless as hitting a tank with a foot._

_Dark stars danced around his eyes as his vision faded, a useless red WARNING screamed with urgency about the compromised state of his subdermal armor and the incoming threat of organ damage._

_With the last slivers of his consciousness, Takemura thought, there truly was no hope._

_V appeared from behind Smasher, like the hulk’s own shadow, slipped the blade from the monster’s leg and cleaved —with one swift motion— the artificial nerves and wires of Smasher’s arm through the opening of his plaiting._

_Sparks flew from the wounded machinery and the arm went limp and flaccid. Without losing a moment, Takemura clutched the hidden tantō inside his haori-style suit jacket and, using the elevated position that the wall allowed him as an extra impulse, he impaled the insides between Smasher’s left hip._

_The cyborg howled in rage and jumped meters behind to recalibrate the mobility of his extremities._

_V would offer him no such opportunity._

_The moment the Borg’s feet touched the ground, V had already breached through Smasher’s protocols and uploaded the Short Circuit daemon up —it was the only quickhack V found he could infect Smasher’s state of the art systems with. It would have to be enough._

_As Smasher’s straightened up his spine, stiff and thick like a steel rail, the program got in: blue lightning bolts dispersed through all of the juggernaut’s machinery kept him paralyzed and spasming on his feet._

_That was the opening V was looking for._

_V wrapped the grenade in his loose Monowire and removed the safety pin. With a sweeping motion, V threw the wire —and with it, the grenade— around Smasher’s neck. The wire flew over the air, and the explosive —like a weight— spun once, then twice —circling the cyborg’s nape— and went limp on the curve of the abomination’s right shoulder._

_Smasher’s right arm grew bright and burst into burning rubble._

_Before the smoke from the detonation could clear, V dashed momentarily into superhuman speed, smart shotgun in hand. But he had underestimated his opponent, for Smasher switched his eyesight to thermal vision and met him straight on with his arm-gun’s bullets._

_V managed to read the upward motion of the cyborg’s weapon in time and leaped into whatever cover the rising panels of the area afforded him. The shotgun’s bullets sung high-pitched and high-speed through the air, but the steep and sudden curve that V made while dodging threw their trajectory off. Smasher had only to lift his plated arm to block them._

_Both combatants jumped backwards after the impact to generate distance between themselves, V anticipating a counterattack and Smasher another surprise trick from V’s arsenal._

_“Rotting flesh,” threatened Smasher, pelting the arena with machine gun fire._

_“You’re on my way, scrap,” growled V, baring his teeth as he threw another grenade at the precise moment for the bullets and the explosive to connect; shrouding the space between them with a black cloud of smoke and shrapnel._

\---

It is eight in the morning when V arrives at Haneda Airport.

_Got out of the plane_ , texts V.

Goro watches the crowd of passengers move towards the exit like a flock. He looks attentively amidst the herd of strangers, trying to recognize V between them.

There, in the furthest corner of the human mass he can distinguish the merc’s head as he tries to go down the escalator, obstructed with a gaggle of old Japanese ladies on their way out. V carries a big duffel bag on his back and a small black rolling luggage, Goro even recognizes the green-gray color of the Samurai jacket the man wears.

V turns his head left and right, still searching for Goro.

_Where are you??_ asks V.

V has almost descended the full height of the long escalator’s sharp decline.

_Keep walking straight_. _I am right in front of you_ , Goro hints.

V scans the area one last time and suddenly stops, V and Goro eyes are now locked into each other’s. The younger man's expression changes, from jetlagged to dead serious. V walks one purposeful step after another and Goro can feel the familiar adrenaline of battle being pumped directly into his brain.

When V is only but a few feet apart he stops dead on his tracks and proceeds to do the stiffest and most exaggerated _saikeirei_ bow Goro has ever had the misfortune of seeing in his life.

V lifts his head, his face still fixed in an expression of deep gravitas, and watches Goro expectantly. Takemura returns the gesture and bows in turn, but without the… steep inclination of his companion.

Once Goro returns to his initial position, V breaks into a grin and laughs.

He moves forward and, once he is right next to Takemura, V affectionally slaps him twice in the space between the spine and his left shoulder.

“Good to see you man, how’re you?”

Goro snorts. Of course.

“You were taking, how do you say, ‘the piss out of me’?”

V’s hand moves to the side of Takemura’s shoulder and pulls him closer, a show of comradery. Goro had forgotten how tall V was, standing half of a head above the bodyguard.

“Maybe, maybe,” V says in a low, conspiratorial tone. He let goes of Takemura’s arm and Goro turns so they could speak face to face.

With his arm still midair, V slowly places his hand on top of Goro’s black winter overcoat, all fingers except one holding its wool lapel from underneath.

“Wow, that’s a preem coat,” V slides his thumb back and forth over the piece of fabric. Then, turning the rest of his fingers over, he pats the lap straight. “Do you think that Arasaka may need a terminally ill bodyguard somewhere?”

Goro smiles, regretfully amused by the other man’s tomfoolery, and pointedly ignores the question, “You look good too.”

“I look like someone with a bitchin’ jetlag. But the lie is appreciated.”

“Long flight?”

“You’ve got no idea,” V groaned. “Couldn’t sleep a wink in between. Bored myself outta of my _mind_.”

“You do not seem to be the kind of person that is sensitive to petty discomforts like a night on a plane.”

“Yes Goro, I do look cheap and trashy. Thank you for noticing.”

Goro looks down for a moment, trying to gather himself before he laughs. He stares at the perfectly polished floor tiles, so clean he can see his and V’s reflection on the ground.

“I meant that you are strong, and you do what you must. But yes, that too.”

V chuckles. “Yeah, been sleeping less and less as of late.”

Takemura arches an eyebrow.

“Don’t give me that look Goro, it’s not—” V interrupts himself with a yawn, Takemura’s eyebrow grows taller, “…so bad.”

Goro hopes that his stare manages to convey how unimpressed he was. It did a fine job if you asked V.

“Got too lil’ time to waste around in something like sleeping, anyways.”

“Oh, do shut up already you lout,” replies Takemura, though from the tone his voice V knew he meant nothing by it. “Come, let us get you to your lodgings already. Before I have to carry you.”

\---

Takemura unlocked the door then moved to the side, welcoming V to take his first steps inside the apartment.

The first thing V saw was the _genkan_ —a small entrance area that divided the door from an elevated area, the beginning of the indoor living space. To his side, above the floor V was currently standing, he could see a long, gray-brown wooden cabinet with many doors across its length. On top of the furniture, a black and white ceramic bowl —colored dark and blue like the deep earth or a moonless night— shone, seemingly lacquered with glowing blackness.

V took a step forward to look at the piece closer.

“Shoes,” warned Goro the moment he moved his leg.

“Wh— Oh, yeah. Right, sorry,” apologized V and began to remove his outdoor footwear, standing up and without untying his shoelaces.

Goro watched the strange dance in one leg that V performs, fixed on the spot, as he tried to remove his sneakers in the laziest way possible.

A chaotic display, thought Goro to himself before exhaling through his nose.

“I will get you a pair of slippers,” and Goro paused, “while you deal with… that.”

“I got big feet,” warned V.

Goro opened the first door of the long cabinet and V could peer into rows of gray slippers displayed orderly against one another.

Takemura brought out the first pair. V’s soles do not manage to get halfway in.

“Hmm,” murmured Goro, three pairs of increasingly larger slippers later, “you did not lie about your shoe size.”

“You know what they say about men with big feet,” quipped V, cheekily.

“Yes, they make natural circus clowns,” Goro replied without missing a beat.

V snorted in disbelief, “I should put my foot on your face for that.”

“I reserve myself the right to insult you,” explained Takemura with a sly smile, “since you have not been in my house for five minutes and you are already becoming a pain in the ass.”

V let out a cry in mock offense, “So much for the legendary Japanese hospitality.”

Takemura and V’s feet reached an agreement with the largest pair of slippers he owns, ones that left just a fingernail-long distance of V’s heel outside the shoe.

With that problem solved. Takemura could finally and officially welcome V in. They walked through the entrance hallway —but not before V peeked inside the glossy _raku_ ceramic that caught his eye, the black outside is contrasted with the white lines in the interior, spun around the surface like the engraved circular motion of the stars— and into the living room when V exclaims:

“Goro you failed to tell me you lived in a fucking penthouse.”

“Technically,” explained Goro, “it is not a penthouse. There are several other floors above mine.”

“You live in a house-sized apartment. That _has_ to count for _something_.”

Goro could no longer suppress his smile. “Can I show you where you will be staying, or do you have another rude comment for me to listen to?”

“Lead on. I’m sure I’ll think of one on the way.”

Goro guided V to the guest room, an ample space with few, but striking, decorations. The floor was divided by alternating black and white squares of _tatami_ mats, giving the impression of a chess grid. The tiles were so clean that when the light of the window in the leftmost wall —latticed with red cypress and white opaque glass to resemble the traditional _shoji_ — touched their surface, they reflected it like metal.

A long and tall, rectangular wood structure fixed perpendicularly across the opposite walls of the room, housed the window in the middle. The construction appeared to V, as far as he could tell, to work as an expansive, open shelf a few feet above the ground. On it, V could see two black futons with matching pillows folded neatly and methodically; separated between each other by what appeared to be a miniature, portable table.

V whistled in approval as he roamed over the room. The front wall, parallel from the door, exposed its dark brown pillars made from lustrous timber. The bases of the pillars were joined together, like a frame that went around the floor, giving extra space for tasteful ornaments, such as the gray plant sprawling its —save for some small pink shoots— long, almost entirely naked, zig-zag limbs like lightning bolts from the tall ceramic vase where it resided.

V traced his finger across the small tree. A replica go figure. But one so faithful that V had been deceived by it.

“Ever since I moved in here,” confessed Goro with a chuckle, “never has this room seen use.”

“You’ve never had guests?”

Goro opened his mouth to reply, of course he has had _guests_ , colleagues that he received and hosted for with food and drinks and all the necessities. But V interrupts him faster than he can answer, a sly smile on his face.

“Ah, I get it,” said V triumphantly, “the other guests slept in the master’s bed, didn’t they?” He added with a wink.

Goro rolled his eyes with as much as derision as humanly possible. Their silver color made the gesture seem like two, twin moons orbiting around their axis.

V was convinced that Takemura’s eyes were a shade unique in the entire world. An intuition he knew was ridiculous, they were artificial, mass-made implants for public consumption. There were hundreds of thousands with the same eyes as him.

Then no, it wasn’t the color that was Goro’s personal privilege. But he wore them as if they belonged fully to him. V couldn’t picture anybody else better fitting for those two seafoam pools, tempting him to dive in well beyond the surface.

“Americans are so _uncouth_ ,” Takemura sneered him back to reality.

“If you think I’m crude you wouldn’t even begin to imagine the kind of thing Johnny would have said to you.”

“Johnny? The engram?” Goro disposition changed back from that light mood they had been in, to the detached, professional exterior V had first met back in Night City.

V cursed himself internally. “Engram, rockerboy, terrorist. Take your pick really, but yeah.”

“About that,” Takemura began to say, stopping himself to word the sentence about to leave his throat carefully. V thought that Goro looked as if he were tasting them in his mouth instead, “How have you been feeling since the operation, V?”

“Lonely,” he said on reflex. “I mean, I got so used to having him around. Talking with him.”

Fuck, thought V. He said too much, now he could only keep going.

“It’s like there’s a gap in my head, I keep waiting for him to say something. But there’s just… silence.”

“Do you miss him?” And V could feel a hint of longing in Goro’s voice. Empathy, perhaps.

“In a way,” V scratched the back of his neck. “You spend so much time with somebody, sharing everything —even if it was unwillingly— and you start to find parts of someone else inside of you, y’know?”

“Ah,” answered Goro. He did. “Different worlds that you did not imagine could be, now co-exist? Next to each other?”

V opened the palm of his hand in direction to Goro, as if to concede him the point. “Exactly.”

A pause.

“Yes,” said Goro with finality. “I know what you mean.”

V smiled, relieved. The intended meaning of Goro’s answer proverbially flying above his head.

Takemura moved on, helping V to settle his things in the closet, teaching him how the shower worked, and so on. While instructing V in the correct form of sleeping in a futon, he said, “Now… in terms of itinerary, is there anything you definitely do not want to miss during your stay in Japan?”

V pressed his knuckles against his lips, burrowing his brow for a moment.

“Show me everything that you think is worth seeing,” he spouted suddenly and confidently. “What makes Japan so special for you.”

Goro nodded gently. Yes, he could work with that.

\---

When Goro tries to remember the things V and him did on the earliest days of their trip, the first things he evokes are the smallest ones. The details.

He knows that on the two days that they spent walking in Tokyo, Goro and V went to the Meiji Shrine, to the traditional Asakusa district and to see a sumo match in the Kokugikan. But those are not the memories that sprout in full depth from the back of his mind. That place belongs to V taking pictures of the most insignificant things: toilets, trash cans, vending machines.

Of V getting left behind in a crosswalk on Shibuya and embarrassingly waving at him all the way from the opposite end. Or stopping at a shop full of stuffed animals to decide which ones he should pick for River’s nephew and niece (a Shiba Inu and a red panda).

Takemura does not remember much about Tokyo because, if he is honest with himself, he does not favor Tokyo very much compared to the other, more well-preserved historic places in Japan. He lives in the capital because Arasaka-sama resides in the capital and needs him there. Nothing more or less.

But he does remember that, when he was explaining to V how the Ukiyo-e were made and their history while strolling around in the museum, V nodded his head thoughtfully and said that having him there was better than having his own personal guide.

\---

The fourth day, Goro and V hop on the bullet train and ride to Kyoto.

They walk through the Fushimi Inari shrine, the pathway through the forested mountainside guided by the vermilion tunnels of thousand gates.

Goro explains to V that, because of the protected status of the shrine, it is one of the only places where the Japanese red foxes still live. Though they remain away from human trails.

“I’ve never seen a fox —of any kind— before,” comments V.

“I have not either,” confesses Goro as they make their way forward. “I knew that when she was a child, Hanako-sama had one as a pet.”

“A pet?”

“In her private zoo actually,” replied Takemura, matter-of-factly.

“Rich people,” mused V derisibly, to nobody in particular. Goro still found the remark an uncomfortable surprise, like static shock.

It comes back to him, many steps forward, when Takemura is about to tell V about how the black kanji painted on the pillars of each one indicates the donors of each one until, in one of them, Goro can read the names of the Arasaka family: Saburo, Hanako, Yorinobu and Kei.

Takemura opens his mouth, then closes it.

“What?” teases V with a smile. “You looked like you were about to tell me something.”

“No, it is…” Takemura starts. “It is nothing.”

V walks closer to Goro so he can gently elbow his arm. The remaining way he does not go back and Goro does not mention it.

Goro shows him the magnificent Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, gilded in dazzling gold leaf. As Takemura retells to him the many times the temple had been burnt and rebuilt, V observes the towering building from afar: surrounded by evergreen pine trees, reflected by the immaculate surface of the crystalline pool.

“It’s really something,” murmurs V. His gaze fixed in the spectacle in front of his eyes.

“Yes,” replies Goro, watching V’s focused expression, “it is.”

After going that route, only one of the classical tourist spots remain, so V and Goro insert themselves inside the labyrinth of narrow, lantern-lit alleyways of the Gion district —preserved out of the reach of time, like a pocket space, between the two pincers of neon-clad refulgence that are the modern Kyoto districts neighboring it. V takes a selfie with a chromed geisha for his album and begs Goro for them to go to a _ryōtei_ style restaurant, next thing he knows, Takemura finds himself having to practically compete with the merc for the meals of the _kaiseki_ lest V leaves nothing for him to eat.

\---

The fifth day they move from Kyoto to Nara by train. V gets to feed and pet one of Nara Park's curious deer, walk through the elegant garden of Yoshiki-en and pray in front of the Great Buddha in the Todaiji temple.

“What did you pray for?” Goro asks him.

V eyes him for a moment, as if Goro had asked him to do a backflip right then and there.

“You don’t ask those things,” replies V. “Otherwise they don’t come true.”

“That is for wishing wells and shooting stars,” Goro chuckles, “not for prayers.”

“Rather not risk it,” V lifts his arms behind his neck and rests his neck between them. “It’s an important one after all.”

\---

Instead of returning to the comfortable lodge in Nara, Goro drives them to Osaka.

“The nation’s kitchen,” Goro explains to V. “There’s a saying in there: _kuidaore_. It means ‘to eat oneself bankrupt’,” Goro turns from the wheel and says to V with a resolute smile, “I will teach now what _real food_ is in Japan.”

They arrive at the port city half an hour after the sunset, the dying light bathing the river in purple dusk. Goro drags him, in discreet excitement, through the neon-clad streets of Dotonbori.

“Just like home,” shouts V through the noise of the shifting crowds moving up and down like the sea waves.

Goro feeds him _okonomiyaki_ in front of the luminous Glico Man, _takoyaki_ near the Tsutenkaku Tower and _kushikatsu_ through the alleys of Ura-Namba to Torame Yokacho. And V can scarcely remember a time where food and beer tasted this good. He tries to make a list from the top of his mind: barbecues with the Bakkers, Señora Welles’ cooking, that time he and Jackie walked two hours looking for an elusive food truck at 3am —drunk out of their minds after going clubbing— that his partner had sworn up and down that were the best fucking thing to eat in all of Night City, only to end up wolfing down some greasy fries with a lemon soda near the beach, waiting for the sun to rise.

“You seem pretty chill tonight,” he yells at Goro as he drives V’s wheelchair faster and faster down the street. “Finally got the stick out of your ass, old man?!”

Takemura responds with a hoarse laugh.

“Osaka is not the right city,” confesses Takemura with a wicked smile, “to be on one’s best behavior.”

V drunkenly hollers at Goro for him to drive them to a club. And perhaps because Goro is drunk too, he hums in agreement and does just that.

Turning down the streets of Higashishinsaibashi, the pair find themselves at the front of an elevator painted in bright fuchsia, the entrance to a literally underground club named UTERO.

V slides his chair forward and presses the calling button.

“Shall we?” says V, adding a mock curtsy.

Takemura gets inside the elevator and V follows. As they go down, the distant, muted sounds grow louder and louder as they slide deeper and deeper below. The building, notes Goro, seems to be something of an abandoned department store, the club located in what used to be the parking lot, or at least a large basement, supported by thick pillars of concrete.

“That would explain the car sized elevator,” answers V with a cigarette between his teeth.

“Because Japan’s status as a seismic country, when cities had the need to expand, they could not build up,” Goro explains to him. “Urban development, then, grew underground. Most of Japan’s modern ghettos go below the surface.”

“That can’t make for a very good air quality,” quips V while he lights the smoke.

Goro eyes V unimpressed. The other man smirks at the irony, ignoring his guide’s gaze.

“Should you be smoking those?”

“Nope. But… a friend of mine got me into the habit, not long ago.”

Takemura scoffs, “A bad influence.”

“You can’t even imagine.”

As they arrive at the lowest floor, B5, Goro turns to V.

“This is only a quick tour. No excessive drinking and no drugs whatsoever. I will not have you overdose and flatline on my watch.”

A glint in V’s eyes. He stands up from his chair.

“I promise I’ll behave,” the doors open, flashing pink lights and thundering beats flood the inside of the elevator. “ _On your watch_.”

V dashes into the club, pays the bouncer the entrance fee and then runs to the bar. Goro follows him from behind. He sees V with a tall unknown cocktail glowing fluorescent green through the dark shapes of people. He sees V on the dancefloor, moving rhythmically to the beat of the music, first alone, then with others. Strangers. Goro watches him from beyond the steps separating the bar from the revelry and in between the abstract, magenta holograms that swim between the dancers like bioluminescent plankton.

It is not Takemura’s atmosphere —the booming techno music, surrounded by drunken, brain-fried young adults— it puts Goro on edge. Truth is, he had done it for V. Ever since V had told Takemura that he had wanted to see what Goro believed to be the parts of Japan he liked best… well, he had. The historical buildings, the amazing landscapes. But Goro could not stop feeling selfish about the whole thing, not just the tour but the trip itself.

He had known, when he had texted V, what he was asking the other man to do: _Give me what may be the last weeks of your life. Choose me, over everybody else_.

And V had agreed to it. And Goro knows for a fact that the merc might purposely behave like a punk to get inside others’ skin, but he was absolutely not stupid. V knew what the invitation to Japan could mean, and he had gone anyways.

Goro wanted to do something for V. Something that Goro thought more around his alley.

The punk barman sends him a dirty look and he orders one bottle of overpriced mineral water so he can keep sitting on the three-legged stool he has perched himself onto to monitor V. It hits the spot, and Goro can feel himself becoming more sober.

As he scans the area, Takemura can see the younger man being instigated by his new friends to go dance with them on top of the large, square leather couches scattered around the place —purposely located so the most motivated partygoers could get on top, show-off and dance above the multitude.

A gnaw of worry itches Goro in the back of his mind. On one hand, Takemura does not want to ruin V’s fun, on the other, he should not be going all out like that.

To his relief, V turns them down. Goro can tell V says something that sends the group hollering —though he cannot catch what— and walks away, diving between the waves of people.

V makes his way back to the bar, to Takemura. Goro can tell by the methodical pause between steps that V is _wasted_ , probably trying not to embarrassingly trip his way forward.

As he finally reaches the bar stool next to Goro, V plops himself in the seat with a sigh of relief.

“Had a good night?” asks Goro in an amiable tone, sipping his water bottle.

“Y’know,” V’s tongue stumbles, “this fucking illness man… I think it made me a lightweight.”

Goro snorts. “Truly an affront to your dignity.”

V nods tiredly and thoughtfully. “Want the rest of this drink?”

Ah, the radioactive green one. Goro receives it and immediately leaves it on top of the counter. They sit together in comfortable silence —or whatever passes for silence in this racket. Though Goro can tell, by the way V narrows his eyes into the empty space, that the man is thinking about something. Suddenly, V stands up.

“C’mon, Goro,” V slurs. “Dance with me.”

Takemura purses his mouth. “I have to watch your chair for you,” he says, trying to defuse the offer. “I cannot bring it to the dance floor.”

“Then,” suggests V, barely avoiding tumbling, “let’s dance here,” V lifts his index finger high and then presses it against Goro’s chest to punctuate. “By the counter.”

Goro can feel a sudden sweat starting to go down his neck. It is hot in this nightclub, he thinks.

“The bartender is watching us,” tries to counter Takemura.

“Let him watch then,” and V wraps his arms loosely around Goro’s shoulders and neck. Shit, thinks the man, V really is quite tall… “He has seen worse than—” V pauses. “Two good friends… waltzing.”

“Waltzing,” repeats Goro deadpan. V has not stopped following the beat of the music with his hips. Takemura loses a second watching the hypnotizing pattern.

“Waltzing,” V reiterates, though it sounds more like “wall-seeing” than the original word.

“I confess, it is not my kind of environment,” he interrupts himself as he tries to keep V from falling down. “Even when I was young… I did not use to frequent places like this one.”

V draws closer, whispering into Takemura’s ear, “Never too late to start.”

Takemura does not know where to put his hands. Does not know if he wants to use them to untangle himself from V’s arms, so he tightens his grips on the bar counter more strongly. V was obviously drunk, so perhaps he felt pity for Takemura staying behind by himself because the older man did not know how to _be_ in a place like Club UTERO. Once he had that thought, Takemura felt less lost. V —in his classical provocateur behavior— mostly likely thought this was a way to include Goro in his fun without making explicit Takemura’s awkwardness or imply any softness on V’s part.

With that in mind, Goro smiled to himself, he was not going to let V get a laugh out of him that easily.

Oh no, two could play that game.

“Let the lesson begin then, _sensei_ ,” Takemura lifted himself up from the counter and dragged a very limp-legged V —still hung to the bodyguard’s shoulders— to an empty space, a few feet forward. Goro could feel V giggling between the crook of his own neck which made the older man’s blood rush to his face.

Embarrassment, he said to himself. He was not used to such displays of indecorous attention.

Takemura raised himself straight, a position that V imitated. Then, the younger man extended his left arm welcomingly and Goro put his hand on V’s.

He was glad that V’s palm seemed to be as sweaty as his own.

V reacted by introducing his right arm between the space of Goro’s own right arm and torso. V, then, began to move the two of them in circles around an imaginary axis.

“Do you know how to?” V asks him.

“How to what?”

“Waltz,” replies V as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“I am afraid not,” answered Takemura, embarrassed. Had his lack of expertise been that obvious? He had only seen a waltz performed in balls where he was being deployed as Saburo Arasaka’s bodyguard. Goro opens his mouth to apologize and—

“Oh, good. Me neither,” V interrupts him. “I saw it once or twice in a BD.”

“Ah,” Goro deadpans. Frustrated, amused, Goro finds himself once again blindsided with V. He has never met someone like him, he knows not how to predict somebody like him.

“This waltz… seems out of place for such an establishment. And such music.”

Goro can tell they seem to be moving inside the corners of an imaginary square as they rotate. The waltz —or more precisely, V’s _idea_ of waltz— consists in the couple wrapping around each other and simultaneously moving their feet to the left after a beat. Failure of doing so would provoke one of the dancers to step on the other’s foot.

“Maybe. I think it’s fulfilling its purpose just fine.”

Takemura arches his right eyebrow. “Which is?”

“For me to keep…” V sidetracks, leans his head on Goro’s shoulder, “an eye on _you_.”

“Are you not already close enough for that?”

“What’re you so scared of? Little ol’ V?”

“I am not,” says Goro. Though something tepid, neither warm nor cold, uncoils itself heavily inside Goro’s gut.

“I could get closer… if I wanted to,” V says. And if it is a threat, it does not feel like one.

The merc lifts himself from Takemura’s shoulder and then… there they are, face to face. Goro does not pull away.

Mischief is visible in V’s face, a roguish smile awakened in his lips.

“How close can I go, I wonder…”

And there is something cocky in the way V looks at him and there is something similar to competitiveness smoldering Goro’s heart slowly, but not quite; something youthful and daring. He does not recoil as V closes all semblance of remaining distance between the two of them and kisses him.

Goro freezes. All the heat he felt before turning to ice in his stomach, because, for one, V is _drunk_ —inebriated beyond any idea Goro had; and secondly Goro feels a blow of shame hitting him straight in the stomach as he finds out he does not have the strength to pull away. Finds himself wrapped inside an emotion brighter than hope and deeper than despair —a tunnel of light that outshines the club’s floating, pale red holograms dazzling Goro’s eyes like a rain of cherry petals— as he lets V kiss him again and again —further and further, hungrier and hungrier.

Takemura recovers himself from the surprise attack. First, he separates himself from V’s lips. He decides that the best course of action is to not end all physical contact completely, V is practically leaning his full weight on Takemura’s body, and he fears that the merc could fall.

What had he been thinking? Goro admonishes himself. V could not possibly have meant that. It had been a joke in bad taste, a prank taken too far by V to tease him like he always did. But one he could not be completely blamed for. Not only Goro should have known that encouraging V to party like he was healthy was a dangerous idea, but Takemura had also not reacted fast enough and instead took advantage of someone who was completely intoxicated, in no state to consent anything at all.

Goro does not let any of the internal turmoil going inside his head to show. Now is not the time. He puts on the cool poker face he uses while on his job, he had a duty.

“You are drunk, V. We should leave.”

“Uh?” replies V dumbly. He cannot even bring himself to open his eyes in full as he answers. Goro feels shame once again.

“Up we go,” and Goro lifts V up by the underarms in one swift movement, placing him horizontally across Takemura’s shoulders, carrying V fireman’s style to his wheelchair. V laughs hysterically the entire way to his seat and the entire way to the elevator.

“You okay over there, soldier?” Goro asks him, still a little worried, once they are finally going up.

“Aye, aye cap’n.”

\---

In the taxi, on their way to the hotel, V sleeps with his head leaning in the cold window. Goro watches the man snore almost inaudibly and wonders if it is too undignified to push the wheelchair of a man who partied himself out of consciousness through the hotel’s lobby or if he will have to wake V up. Tragically, Takemura does not find the strength inside his heart to disturb the dreams of his sloshed friend.

He sighs.

Goro remembers the kiss all the way to the hotel. He remembers it on the elevator, on their way up. He remembers it when he finally shakes V awake so he can undress in the dark and get inside the bed.

He remembers when he is in his own bed. He remembers himself remembering it until the weight of the kiss and the multiplying memories of it flood his mind, their crushing weight making him lose consciousness.

His last thought is the ghost of those lips pressing on his own, haunting him. Across the night, in his restless sleep, Goro is a man possessed. They reappear, they disappear. Then reappear again.

\---

Goro wakes up while V snores in the bed next to his own. The man just watches as the merc’s chest raises up and down rhythmically under the morning’s orange glow.

For all his talk about not sleeping, V’s days are interrupted by bouts of somnolence. One moment he’s talking lively and throwing quick, snappy comments around; the next one, he has lost consciousness. In the car, on a bench, in a bed, in his folding wheelchair. And suddenly, he is back again and they both pretend that nothing happened. It is an alcoholic miracle that he managed to sleep through whole eight hours uninterrupted really.

V is spread on the bed, having thrown it in complete disarray while he moved asleep. He had never met anyone who tossed and turned _that_ much while unconscious, though is there anybody in the world like V in the first place?

The man’s neck is bent at an awkward angle, practically falling off the edge of the mattress.

Goro imagined that one day he was going to wake up tired of their little trip. Everyday a new hotel, everyday new sightings, everyday a new day. And that one day all of those experiences would blur and become indistinguishable from one another. That one day the only thing that would be different is how the world looks exactly the same. Goro discovers to his surprise that he does not. That he likes V incessant chattering and that he likes V getting on his nerves and that he likes V even when he hacks the vending machines for free drinks.

One day Goro wakes up while V snores in the bed next to his and the only thing that is different is the way Goro looks at the other man.

He walks to where the young man rests and carefully holds V’s neck on his hands, as to not wake him up. It would be so easy, a part of him tells him, to just crack that neck with the force of his arms. Like he had done time and time again. Like he had seen V done it before, back when they were on the run. And he remembers that night, so many months ago now, in the shitty motel V rented both of them a room. How they had laid in that not-sleeping way, gun on their hands, aware of every movement in the room around them.

How different it is from now, Goro thinks. The way that each night they lay unaware of each other, together. How V’s polished reflexes do not react to Takemura’s touch. And the man wonders if it is possible for them to recognize each other’s bodies while they dream.

Goro finishes fixing V’s posture while he sleeps, so he does not wake with an ache.

\---

Goro drives them out of the Osaka bay, towards mount Shosa, the railway and the millenary temples that conform Engyo-ji. He thinks of the lakes, the waterfalls, the traditional teahouses on their way to the magnificent gardens of Okayama. None of them which he has seen before.

Would he ever have? Had V not pushed him into this trip? There is nothing of interest, that Arasaka-sama could have wanted in that small city.

“Hey, Takemura,” V interrupts his thoughts, his face pressed into the cold surface of the window. “About last night…”

Goro’s heart skips a beat. With V turned away from him like that, he cannot gauge the merc’s expression.

“Yes?” he answers as solemn as he manages.

“Did I do anything I oughta regret?” V asks while nursing his hangover. “Besides drilling fuckin’ holes in my head or something, I mean.”

Goro pauses. He taps his fingers on the steering wheel then looks at the rearview mirror. There is nobody behind and the road in front is clear. It is only them and the open highway.

“No,” he finally answers. For the inner peace of _whom_ he does not know.

“Ah, good,” V replies in a neutral tone. “I know I can be a handful while drunk, so.”

“Hmm,” Takemura hums thoughtfully, “you did try to teach me how to ‘waltz’ though.”

V groans in embarrassment, a first, while a beatific smile grows on Goro’s face, pleased with evil joy.

\---

On day seven, Goro and V drive to the historical city of Kurashiki, now more of a museum than a populated settlement. V is reminded in some way of those big theme parks back in America. Probably because nobody _actually_ lives in Kurashiki, they live in the outer rings and work their lives away to curate and maintain a particular atmosphere.

As they march along the green canal, between the synthetic trees that are always in perfect, artificial bloom, V feels himself walking through a living photograph. He had never been a fan of that particular brand of American urban planning that consisted in demolishing everything that wasn’t brand new. Nothing in America ages, replaced instead by the smell of fresh concrete and plastic wrapping. But here, in the beautiful Kurashiki, he finds that the past also has an aroma: the cloying perfume of eternity. It scares him, the possibility of not changing, of tying yourself to something perpetually that you can’t break away from.

Hours later, when they are both standing in front of the red _torii_ gate of Itsukushima —the water glistening bright and blue under the sunlight— that Goro asks V a question that, only now that they are close, he feels it is appropriate to verbalize.

“Is V your real name?”

V stares at him perplexed. Shit, had he offended V somehow?

“I— I just assumed it was an alias back when we first met. But everybody, even your friends, seemed to call you that way,” Goro promptly stammers. Then immediately adds, “Americans have quite peculiar names sometimes, so I thought—"

V interrupts him by laughing like he had been told the funniest thing in the world. Perhaps he has, in a way.

“Vincent,” he answers him, trying to put his grin under control. “Vincent Bakker,” he extends Goro his hand in friendly mockery. “Nice to finally meet you.”

Takemura relaxes his shoulders and snorts, he shakes V’s —Vincent’s— hand. Despite the illness, Goro can feel the calm strength of V’s grip. An inner fortitude that speaks on its own, without needing to dominate the other person to establish itself.

“Takemura Goro. The pleasure is all mine.”

“It was an alias,” V explains between small bouts of giggling. “Been that since I was kid. When doing odd jobs for folks who aren’t nomads, your tribe, it’s safer to use pseuds.”

V turns his gaze away from Goro and to the horizon. His eyes give a serene, thoughtful look to the red gate in front of them. As if reminiscing something that was sad, or heavy, long ago and finding out it does not hurt anymore. A wound slowly eroded into clean scar tissue by the passage of time.

“Only my family called me Vincent,” he stops, biting the inside of his mouth for a moment, then continues. “When I left the Bakkers for Night City, I didn’t want to be called that way. It brought back painful memories, of being part of something and now fitting nowhere.”

“I apologize,” says Goro, only tentatively putting his hand on top of V shoulder, “for making you remember something bitter.”

V stares at Goro’s hand, feeling its comforting weight. Like an anchor to reality.

“It’s ok,” V murmurs. “Only a few folks back in the city knew that name. Jackie, Misty, Vik…”

“Good friends,” pointed out Goro.

“ _Close_ friends,” V corrected. He lifted his eyes to meet Goro’s for an instant, then did what Takemura could only describe as a swift once-over, looking at him as if for the first time.

“You could call me that too,” V said, more quickly than he had meant to. “If you wanted to.”

Goro felt the small weight in his chest go up his trachea to become a strange lump in his throat. During that brief exchange of one type of heaviness to another, a part of Goro, his skin, shuddered in an ache —an anticipation so sudden and desperate it felt like a quiet type of weeping. A wail, begging him to reach out and get _closer_ to V; to feel V’s touch on his arms, his hands.

He repressed the impulse; he could not do that. What kind of meaning would all the other tourists at the beach —or V— ascribe to such outburst?

“Yes,” replied Takemura. “It would be a great honor.”

V lowered his gaze, put the baseball cap he had on his hand on his head and pulled the brim down, lowering it too. Despite being winter, it was a really hot day.

“Sure, sure,” he nervously laughed. _God_ , V really could feel his face practically radiate redness. “Just, don’t wear it out, okay?”

“Of course, V.”

\---

As V and Goro ride the ferry back from Miyajima, he stares into the waters down below and thinks, in the silence that the tired passengers provide him, about the morning in Kurashiki.

What does it smell like in Mikoshi? Does it look like an artificial reality —a garden in perpetual spring like the rural town— or is it like falling asleep? Dark and deep like the sea.

“What do you think about, friend?” Goro inquires to his unusually quiet companion.

There is so much silence in the ship, V can’t even hear any gulls. Only the sound of the ocean’s waves breaking on the hull of the ferry manage to tether him to his body. Is it cold in the water?

“Nothing much,” he lies. “I was making a list of things that last forever, from the top of my head.”

He turns his back to the sea and leans on the steel railing, his contemplative expression replaced once again with the comic mask.

“Care to help me?”

Goro closes his eyes in amused exasperation.

“Sure,” he answers and walks next to V’s location.

“Good. I’ll start: jellyfish.”

“Radiation.”

“Plastic bags.”

“Numbers.”

“Johnny Silverhand.”

“The wait between ‘today’ and ‘tomorrow’.”

“How very _poetic_ of you.”

“I have my moments of inspiration.”

V chuckles, then hums. There it is, Goro thinks, that contemplative look on his face again. V grips the metal support tight.

“But all of those things don’t really last forever do they? Immortal jellyfish can still be eaten and radiation fades away eventually, as do plastic bags…”

V lifts himself over the top the railing, balancing his weight on the metal bars with his two hands, and sits there.

“Numbers stop when the person stops counting.”

Goro bends his neck up to look at V’s face, now above him. The twilight sits behind V’s head like a halo, rendering him backlit in Goro’s eyes. The bodyguard squints his eyes, but V remains dark in Takemura’s vision. Like a shadow, or a hole torn in the very fabric of space.

“All engrams can be deleted…”

Goro thinks in Arasaka-sama, in the Soulkiller program, in a ghost moving from shell to shell.

“…and ‘today’ and ‘tomorrow’ are just semantics anyways.”

Goro knows that much. V is dying, the date approaching no matter what Zeno’s Paradox he creatively applies to the very real fact.

“But perhaps,” and V uses his arms to impulse himself forward, jumping back to the floor of the ferry, “it’s for the better. That everything has to end, I mean.”

He walks slowly, _tiredly_ , back to his wheelchair. Collapsing on it with loud relief.

“When a mother breastfeeds her newborn is all well and good, but if she does the same when her child is thirty-years old then it’s kind of fucked up, don’t you think?”

Goro inhales deeply the sea salt smell of the ocean, a cold embrace washes him over. A change of scenery is not bad once in a while, he thinks. Refreshing even.

“You have a talent for mental images, V.”

He chuckles. “Well, you aren’t the only poet in this boat I’m afraid.”

\---

_Smasher wasted no time, crossing the cloud of black smoke, to strike in V’s direction with his colossal fists. Out of pure reflex, V managed to read the dash and the punch in time to dodge —barely— out of the way._

_“You spared Oda. So very… human!” mockery in every decibel of his voice._

_Smasher’s knuckles sunk unto the high-tech panels that V had behind him and pierced through them like wet cardboard._

_“And disgusting,” he snarls. “Mercy is_ disgusting _.”_

_Fuck, V calmly thought. *Fuck*._

_The behemoth offered him no quarter, quickly following V’s movements with more shockingly fast hits. V knew that he was not going to be able to fight him head on like that, he needed a distraction._

_“Goro, stand up!”_

_Finally managing to grip the object on his hip, V threw a knife —slashing diagonally between Smasher’s right eye and nose. The underhanded tactic made the cyborg reflexively recoil his head back._

_“Need some—”_

_V noticed with dismay, that the man did not even bleed. *Of course* the fucker’s skin is also inner coated with subdermal armor._

_“—help over here, Goro!”_

_“Can’t kill me yourself, pussy?” Taunted Smasher, his head snapping back in place with the sound grinding metal. “Or do you want him to fuck you that bad, you degenerate street bitch?”_

_Not wasting the minimal breathing room he just earned, V used his leg implants to jump right on top of the wood railing of the platform several meters above._

_“What do you know about ‘fucking’ anyone,” V hollered as he planted his feet on safe ground again, “you death-worshipping Ken doll?”_

_V leaped behind a pillar for cover, grabbed the tech rifle he carried on his back and charged the shot, “All smooth—” The weapon shook in V’s hand with energy. “—down there!”_

_But before he could blast a hole inside Smasher’s skull, a mantis blade —buzzing violently with electricity— cut through the air, almost reaching the right side and ear of V’s face, had the noise of the implants not alerted V in time._

_Fucking Arasaka ninjas had been deployed from the inside of the fucking walls._

_“Can’t kill me yourself, pussy?” he parroted, unloading the charged shot on his assailant, and quickly moving out of the way of the second Saka trooper trying to shiv V in the back._

_Hypocrite, thought V._

_As he turned in urgency to locate Smasher’s position, V’s brain managed to fill his head with mind-numbing terror in the one second V was able to gauge the cyborg pointing towards the merc —exposed out of cover by the melee attack— with his machine gun arm._

_But it also took less than a second to fill his vision with almost misty-eyed relief when Takemura grabbed Smasher by the neck and dropped a live grenade inside the opening of the cyborg’s other arm._

_“I’ve had it up here with all of you insufferable American blowhards!” roared the bodyguard._

_He let go. Then, a flash of fire._

\---

On the eight day, Goro and V exited the city of Hiroshima and rode the car along the prefecture, following along the winding roads between the green hills from the coast and the constant blue of Seto Inland Sea. Some hours past noon they arrived at Takemura’s carefully scheduled destination, Onomichi.

At first, V had thought that Goro wanted them to visit the small coastal town because of its famous temple walk: twenty-five temples connected in a route of two and half kilometers long. Many shrines with panoramic views of the city, built between the ocean and the mountains.

That suited V just fine, with time he had begun to look forward to filling up his _goshuincho_ with the shrines and temples’ signature stamps. Perhaps, he thought amusedly, this act of easy devotion would please the gods. And V knew he needed all the help he could get.

“Oh my god,” exclaimed V when he saw them.

Cats. Hundreds of cats roaming the streets and inside the buildings. Sitting on the window frames, the statues, the stairs, the roofs, and the park benches.

“I’ve never seen so many real animals in my entire life,” gasped V as he petted a cat with his hand meanwhile another jumped to sit on his lap and a third one playfully clawed the rigid tires of his wheelchair. “This is amazing.”

“Look up here V,” instructed Goro. V glanced in Takemura’s direction just in time for the other man to snap a pic of him —smiling in wonder— surrounded by the felines, the coastline behind V blue and white like the tail of a comet.

Goro thought it was a particularly great shot, even if he said so himself. He forwarded it to V.

\---

They began the temple tour with the objective of seeing whatever stroke them as interesting and stopping whenever V felt too tired to continue.

Onomichi was built in the ridges between mountains and water, so exploring what the city had to offer involved, once upon a time, a lot of climbing. Now, clever use of diagonal elevators around the town kept Onomichi accessible to most disabled tourists.

Nothing beat the view of the city from Senkouji’s cable car though, V thought with satisfaction.

\---

Goro had his eyes closed, his face in tranquil but deep meditation.

“What are you praying for today?”

Goro opened only one of his eyes to acknowledge V. He regarded the merc curiously, thinking the pros and cons of letting the young man pry into his thoughts.

“The same thing I have been praying for since we started our pilgrimage: your health and safe recovery,” he said before closing it back again.

V chuckled. It was a genuine laugh, which surprised Takemura. He had expected a sarcastic response, even a bitter one, but he found no note of scorn in V’s voice.

“Thank you,” V said. “Though I think you should focus your prayers in hoping for my peaceful rest. Who knows, I might come back as ghost to haunt you if you don’t.”

Goro smiled, V continued. “I might possess something in your apartment to make your life more difficult. Maybe the toaster, or the refrigerator. I’ll cover your floor with ice, so you don’t forget about me.”

“I could not forget you even if I tried,” Takemura responded with accidental fondness.

V looked at him — _really_ looked at him— like he had done in Itsukushima, and Goro thanked the coldness inside of the temple for keeping the sudden heat pooling in his stomach from moving anywhere else.

“What were you praying for?” asked Goro, to move the conversation along.

“Oh, you know,” Takemura certainly did not know. “Same old, same old.”

“Secret still?”

“Hey, it’s an _important_ one. I have to keep my energy focused and turn it _inwards_ like a mantra,” V shut his eyes and put both of his hands into the praying position.

He craned his neck up and stretched his closed eyelids high above, in mock-mystic ecstasy. “It has to be repeated in silence, over and over again, until every time your heart beats you are praying. And then, until your heartbeat becomes the prayer.”

“I had no idea you had become a monk during the course of our trip, brother Vincent,” mocked Goro with a playful smirk.

V elbowed the man’s arm fondly. “All the temples that you’ve dragged me along and you have the _audacity_ of making fun of me.”

The young man turned away from Goro and walked outside the temple. Takemura stood a moment more, breathing the aroma of incense, then left.

Mercifully for V, the way downhill was mostly bereft of stairs in all but some specific access points. Descending, then, would not be too tiresome. Hell, V said to himself he could even use his chair.

But before returning the way they had come from, V stopped to watch the landscape. From the hill —above the many spiral streets of Onomichi— where the temple was built, the visitors had an excellent view of the seaside town. From the corner he was standing on, V looked first at the horizon and the blue ocean, shrouded mostly in fog; then, he watched the city’s buildings stretching from the borders of the water, to the minute streets that climbed like silver vines up the mountainside; finally, he overviewed the edges of the area he was sightseeing on from the bottom up. A few twists and turns down below, V saw what looked like a row of gray rectangles and obelisks between the trees.

“Hey Goro,” V called to his guide, “what’s are those things down there?”

Takemura zoomed with his implants to the direction V pointed.

Goro hummed, “Graves most likely. It is probably the temple’s graveyard.”

V made a sound of understanding. For a brief moment, he did not move, almost did not breath.

“V?” asked Goro. The younger man opened his mouth as if to say something then closed it, then opened it again to finally speak.

“Do…” his voice trailed off. “Do you mind if we take a look?”

V did not turn to look at Goro at any time during that exchange. In his face, Takemura saw no discernible expression. A sign that V, a man given to his instincts and feelings, had not yet understood whatever the emotion he harbored inside was.

“Lead the way,” said Goro with a polite nod.

\---

“I never thought the Japanese would be big on graveyards.”

“We are not. These are…” Goro looked away when his words trailed off, as if following them. “Remnants. From a different time.”

“So many graves in one place,” V ruminated.

“Have you ever seen one?” asked Goro.

“Sure,” V replied, trying to sound nonchalant. “When a member of your tribe died, we nomads would look for a spot in a nice place around,” V stood up from his chair, to stretch his legs. “Then, make a memorial —to write the dead person’s name and mark the place.”

But V had never been in a whole, bona-fide cemetery before. Perhaps he had seen the ruins of one in a ghost village, the remains of a previous America, while riding down on desert dunes with the wind behind his back.

Meanwhile in Night City, it was logistically impossible —because of the population density and the limited surface— to build a graveyard capable of holding the amount of death that the city produced daily. In its place the Columbarium was constructed, and the citizens were cremated instead. But V had never been surrounded by hundreds of graves like this, meticulously placed and cared for.

“Have you ever lost somebody close to you?” Then Goro clarified, “Back when you lived with the nomads.”

“My mom died in a raid,” V chewed his lip, before speaking again, “when I was a kid. My dad got ill when I was already an adult: cancer. Not too long ago.”

He walked to the nearest one, a stone slab engraved in a foreign language, and knelt before it. V ran his thumb amidst the markings, he could not read it.

“Besides that, a few others, here and there. Life’s like that with the nomads, everybody is your family.”

So many lives, thought V, so many lives that one has no knowledge of. Their joys, their fears. Their prides and their sorrows. All that was left of them were headstones, speaking only silence. What had been their thoughts about death? Had they seen theirs coming? Were they at peace when it happened?

V buried his fingers in the ground. The soil was soft and pliant, tinted a darker shade than the color of mahogany. Clay, most likely, mixed with something else.

“What about you Goro, any of your folks left alive?”

“I never met my father. My mother was… absent for the most part, when I was growing up,” he pauses, Goro tries to get rid of the foreign emotion in his voice. “In truth, my grandmother was the one who raised me.”

“Is there anybody else?” V asked, he did not turn to look at Goro as he did so. “Other family? Friends?”

V knew that Oda was not a “friend.” He had been Takemura’s protégée and student, but that was different from a friend. V also recognized that Goro considered him a friend by now, but a fat load of good that was gonna do for him with V having a shelf-life of one month from now.

V turns to look at him, “A partner maybe?”

“No,” answered Takemura gingerly. “Those would only distract me from my work.”

“So *life* —living— would be a distraction from your _job_ ,” V shakes his head. “That’s so sad man, what’s going to happen to you after you die?”

“The same thing that will happen to you when you do,” replied Takemura in quiet irritation.

V finally turned to face him again.

“You think old man Saburo will be sad when it happens?” V snarked, he walked towards Goro, his feet slow and heavy with tension. “Or Hanako would?”

Takemura was beginning to get impatient. “V, what is your point?”

“ _My point_ ,” V emphasized, “is that they don’t care about you. So, at the very least, you should take care of yourself better.”

Goro scoffed. V was being ridiculous, something he had anticipated could come to pass. It was a wonder it had taken a week or so for it to happen, really.

“What makes you think you know better than me what is good for my life?”

V was now standing —his back straight— right in front of him.

“Because, once upon a time,” V answered immediately, as if he had hoped Takemura had said exactly that, “you told me that, in the end, all we are were the memories we left on others.”

V pointed his index finger and pushed into Takemura’s chest. “ _You_ said that. So Goro, where are those memories, huh?”

His voice proceeded to bleed into exasperation, “Where are the people who will remember you beyond being the guy in the employee of the month plaque at Arasaka?”

Goro averted his gaze from V’s eyes, batting the man’s finger with the back of his hand in one swift motion.

V gritted his teeth, moving away from the bodyguard. “Life truly is wasted on the living.”

Oh, Takemura thought, this fucking _punk_ —

“So if you know so much about life, why do you not live?” Takemura practically snarled at him. “Why did you choose to die back in the orbital station?”

At first, the man said nothing, showing Goro only his back. During that moment of silence, Takemura could see something shift in the merc’s posture, then, V crossed his arms.

“Do you ever think about where Yorinobu is right now?” V asked, finally. He still did not face him.

Takemura nose twitched and wrinkled, as if he had smelled something unpleasant. “No,” he muttered disdainfully.

“I did,” V confessed, “during those weeks I spent in orbit. I wondered if there was still a part of him, aware inside his body.”

V clutched the fabric of his jacket tightly. A gesture that Goro unconsciously mirrored with the insides of his coat.

“One that the neurosurgeons couldn’t scrape away. Because what _I_ learned after sharing headspace with an engram was that, eventually, ‘you’ and ‘him’ start to become _very_ blurry lines.”

Takemura did not say anything, just stood still —teeth clenched— feeling the thrumming his blood made as it rushed through the veins at the sides of his head, like a highway of undiluted frustration.

“I thought about Saburo too,” V said with a click of his tongue. “I wondered if something really remained from one body to another. If something really did mix, then how many people can you jump from before you become someone unrecognizable? Before it becomes another kind of death?”

His words hit a nerve deep inside Takemura. A streak of doubt, like a mineral vein whittled into existence by V’s constant presence.

“Please, V—” Takemura interrupted. He wanted to hear no more.

“Do you think he knew?” V said, more quietly this time. Like a whisper. “Yorinobu, I mean. Do you think he suspected what his father had planned for him? Do you think he’ll try it again with somebody else?”

“It did not have to go that way,” but there was no punch in Takemura’s reply. It felt weak, an obligation.

“Maybe not. But the way I see it I had three options: one, I became stuck inside a machine until they found _somebody_ —one day, fuck knows when— that I could puppeteer until I went cyberpsycho; two, kept inside the server up till someone figured that I was using too much RAM and deleted me—”

“I would have _never_ let that happen to you and even then,” Takemura spat back, “Arasaka wins or loses nothing by having one petty thief in their databanks.”

“And what you haven’t understood yet is that _I believe you, Goro_. I believe you truly, really believe, from the bottom of your heart, that Arasaka doesn’t wish me wrong.”

V walked back to where Takemura was. He met Goro’s eyes straight on, and the bodyguard saw no anger in them.

“And I appreciate that, truly. But I read that contract,” and he raised his tone, not mad but with a bit of _levity_ of all things, “and forfeiting my human rights and being disposed of the moment I become a nuisance is not what I want to happen to me.”

V right hand hovered slightly in the air, wanting to hold Takemura lightly by the shoulder but not daring to.

“Because the truth is that Arasaka _doesn’t care_ about people like us,” V huffed, “you said so yourself. So you can’t actually say with any certainty what the big bosses will do if they decide they profit from it.”

Takemura shut his eyes, rubbing his temples with one hand in frustration.

“Goro—”

“And the third,” Takemura interrupted him. “What was the third option?”

V lowered his hand. “The one you gave me, the one I am the most thankful for. Before, death was inevitable. A fact of my shit life. You let me choose it, accept it on my terms.”

Takemura shook his head unbelieving. He did not understand.

“Is it truly _fine_ with you? After everything you did?”

“This,” V looked around the graveyard, “you mean?”

Takemura did not reply. Instead, he stared at V unflinchingly, head on.

“Not at the beginning but, come on Goro. The best of the best at fucking Arasaka couldn’t save me. _What_ else could have?”

V let out a laugh, it was a humorless thing. He gave one, two steps to the side and rested his weight in one of the stone obelisks of the graveyard.

“Y’know, I already got a second chance. For the Relic to have saved me when it did… hoping for another miracle is too much,” V exhaled, tired.

“Most folks don’t get that much. And in that month us two ran around in Night City like a couple of headless chickens,” he smiled, it was a genuine one. “I did _so_ much. Met so many people, even got to change a few _lives_.”

V turned on his heels, suddenly renewed with energy, walking back to Goro as he enumerated with the fingers of his hands.

“I got to meet Judy, Panam, River, Kerry, fuckin’ _Johnny Silverhand_ …”

A pause. V is once again, right in front of Takemura.

His smile faltered, lips curling and trembling slightly before V tamed them into a straight line, “And you.”

“And _then_ I got six ‘nother months. To live with all of you as I liked.”

He bowed his head, for a second, V stared intently at the ground. When V looked up again, his eyes are bright with a light of their own.

“I’m a very lucky man, y’know?”

These words made Goro’s heart twist inside his chest, making it flinch in anticipated agony. Instead of turning away from this situation, as a primal part of him begged him to run away, he pressed his hand into tight fists. Nails digging on his skin.

“You could have more of it,” and Goro was practically pleading with him then. “You know you could. I would just have to give the word —that you saw reason— and you could join the SYS program.”

A silence. The sound of birds.

“Would that make you happy?” asked V.

“What?” Goro replied, taken off-guard.

“Goro, I’m between a rock and a hard place here. Tell me at the very least what would make you happy.”

“You would wage your future depending on what I told you?” Asked Goro incredulously.

“No, but I am asking you if it would make you happy if I took Arasaka’s offer.”

“Yes,” answered Goro resigned, “I would rest easier if you signed the contract.”

“Why?”

“Because you would live!” he yelled at V, arms outstretched.

“For a certain value of the word “life”, sure. But why do you care what happens to me? I’m of no value any longer to your people.”

He exhaled, feeling drained, “To pay my debt to you, for saving me in the hotel room and helping me fight against Yorinobu.”

“Is that so? In that case, the debt is paid and forgotten. You’re free to go, Goro.”

“V…” Goro warned in a tone of voice that left very clear that he was not playing around anymore.

“Cut the crap already, Goro. Tell me why do you care, why am I here on this trip when you could do anything else? Like your important job that you’ve dedicated your life on pursuing.”

Takemura felt hunted, trapped. Caged like an animal. And from the depths of that dark cage, something equally wild and beastly as he felt snapped and roared.

“Because you _matter_ to me, you stupid piece of shit.”

V felt like somebody just punched the air out of him.

“And because the more time passes,” Goro lower lip trembled, “the less I want to lose you.”

Goro leaned back on the gravestone. He looked down, his right hand holding the weight of his face, his fingers covering his eyes.

“Fucking imbecile. Son of a bitch.”

V went to his side, their shoulders bumping together. V leaned his head on the other man’s shoulder. He could feel the small shakes on Goro’s body, tremors under the surface.

“I’m sorry, Goro.”

“ _Ussēndayo_.”

Takemura slowly sled from the gravestone, sitting on the steps leading to its way. V followed too, then pressed the side of his face against Goro’s shoulder once more.

“I’m sorry.”

“ _Gesuyarou_.”

Goro tilted his head and rested it on V’s own.

\---

The car ride back to the hotel was silent. It was a pitch-black night, and the vehicle’s headlights barely seemed to steal a few meters of the road from the darkness.

“Goro,” V said, cutting through the quiet trance they felt into since they left the graveyard. He felt sleepy, _tired_ , like he had spent days without resting. “I was thinkin’…"

He paused, gathering willpower. Then continues. “There _is_ a place I’d like to see in Japan before I leave. No matter what.”

Goro does not let his eyes off the road. Instead, he nodded.

“Chiba-11.”

Goro drove in silence. Instead of saying anything, he let the night flow inside his mind. Blackness, comforting in its infinitude.

“Since tomorrow we go back to Tokyo we’d already be on our way,” V went on, trying to make a case for his proposition. Goro did not need that much.

“There is nothing there,” Takemura replied straightforwardly. It was true, it was an ugly place full of rubble, poverty, and smog. It was a dangerous place. A place where sometimes kids died while playing on the street, a place where you could get shot by a stray bullet through the makeshift walls of your home.

V held his breath, then quickly said, “I want to see where you come from.”

“It is not a place for someone ill like you are, V,” Goro tried to coax him.

“Don’t patronize me,” snapped V, fast like a whip. “You know who I am Goro, and if a hoodrat puts their iron up my face you should be sure by now that they’d be the ones to regret it.”

“I can still hack an entire cartel by myself in two minutes,” he scoffed with a smirk. “The wheelchair just gives me a comfortable place for my ass to sit while I do it.”

Takemura, to his own annoyance, chuckled. V certainly had his way with words, though perhaps V just knew how to appeal to that part of him he had kept guarded so closely to his heart ever since he became a corposoldier. That kid from the slums, yet unbroken, that dreamed with something better.

V saw the small smile the other man gave and knew that Goro was not _totally_ opposed to the idea of Chiba-11.

“Have you ever come back?” he asked.

“No, it had never been necessary.”

Necessary. He tasted the word in his mouth, he could practically tell what V was probably saying in his mind already. That ‘necessary’ had nothing to do with it. That it was decidedly _not_ what V was asking him and that Goro knew it.

Goro admonished himself for his cowardice. If he had not wanted to go back, he could say it; if he did not want to step a foot on that place for the rest of his life, he also could just _say that_. But that would push him one step closer to the truth, and that terrified him.

Ever since he arrived to Japan, Goro could tell that V had came to possess a quiet dignity that shone through his every actions and words. Once he had accepted death, it seemed like he had learned his place —where he _fitted_ in the world. Gone was the desperate, broken man running around pleading for more time —just a little more time— that he had last met in the space station.

Goro turned and met V’s gaze. They were a tough pair of eyes —ones that had learned to face the sun, dust and desert wind— but they were not without compassion. Open and honest, V regarded him with nothing but the truth of who he was. He had appeared to Goro humiliated and broken how many times by now? And Goro had not rejected him. Takemura knew what that defiant stare, nudging him unflinchingly out of the walls he had built around his heart meant: _You are my equal. Your worth cannot be lessened or lost in my eyes_.

Cocky bastard, Takemura said to himself. Always slipping around until he got what he wanted.

“The truth is—” Goro began to say, he darted forward as the headlights cut through the darkness: the road was straight, and the path was clear, “that I do not want for you to look at that place, Chiba-11, because…”

His throat kidnapped the air rushing past his lungs. Searching for fortitude, he looked to V again.

“I am ashamed.”

He paused, letting the words reverberate in his interior like ripples through water.

“I am ashamed of that place, my origins. Of myself, most of all.”

Goro smiled, though he did not know why. Confusion perhaps, smiled at his own foolishness. At how absurd everything sounds when said out loud, or maybe at the impossibility of words in carrying meaning in any way that mattered.

“Ever since I was a child —the moment I saw those soldiers walking with their brilliant chrome and clean uniforms, so above all that surrounded me— I knew what I was. Poor, crude, dull… and unnecessary,” Goro bit his lip. “Disposable trash.”

“All my life, I had tried to fashion myself into something better. Through effort alone.”

V said nothing and moved not even an inch from his place. He watched and listened, nothing more.

“Even now, the person that sits right next to you is product of that wish. Of trying to become anything but what I know myself as.”

After saying that, came the silence. Takemura did not know how he felt. It was not sadness, nor anger, nor loneliness. Not exactly.

He just felt a little bit emptier.

“Goro, look at me,” V said after what Goro felt an infinite and infinitesimal amount of time at once. The older man did as instructed.

“I’ve met diamonds waiting for me in the middle of the mud, and some real beasts dressed in a suit and tie. I know what I’m about when I tell you: you’re not the things you are born as; you’re the things you choose and let yourself to become. Chiba might have been the beginning of your story, but it wasn’t the end, it was the prologue. A story you wrote at will.”

He hunched closer, until V was almost speaking into his ear. Takemura did not move, he could not even if he had wanted to.

“So I want to see it. I want to see all of it. The places you played in, the first home where you lived. Everything that helped you become the man right next to me. The man who took a risk with me and managed to persuade me to work with _Ara-fucking-saka_ of all people.”

V smiled, as if he was remembering something funny and fondly.

“The man who saved my life.”

Goro is flooded with a thousand impulses at once. To cry, to laugh, to grieve for losses long ago and losses yet to happen; to hug his friend, to kiss him again but this time, without hesitation; to waltz. But most of all, to spill. To spill all of himself into V’s hands even as he wondered if the younger man would hold him if he asked.

He did none of that. Instead, he closed the door V had opened, but not completely. A gap just a little wider than yesterday. He had already said quite much and imposed even more.

“I believe I would like that,” said Goro. “To show you that plenty.”

“Then, to Chiba it is” V concluded.

In comfortable silence, they rode deeper into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got delayed because a member of my extended family passed away of COVID-19 while I was preparing this. On Monday we confirmed the illness, on Tuesday they received oxygen and were on their way to recovery and on Friday’s early morning, tragically and shockingly, they were gone. I tell you this to remind you that the pandemic outside isn’t over just because we left 2020 behind. Be careful. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones, and make that love known to them. You really never know.
> 
> In other less depressing news, this chapter got so big I had to split it into two if it was ever going to be published some day into the current century. So, I already lied to you twice about when was this fic ever going to be over. Yay! On the upper hand, this chapter became LONG. AS HELL. Hope I gave you some good scenarios.
> 
> I have to say this fic has taught quite a few things as it developed, the investigative part of actually making a coherent itinerary throughout places I never seen in my life was challenging. But also, quite interesting and rewarding in its own way. I walk my way out a more cultured person after this whole ordeal. And isn’t that what life is about? The true treasure were the obscure Japanese temples we google mapped along the way.
> 
> I apologize to all of the Japanese nation and its people for any logistic mistakes in advance.
> 
> The next chapter, though, will be the last one. Probably —hopefully— the wait won’t be that long since the amount of fact-checking I need is going to be far less. Next time: Chiba, the Smut™ and the End, For Real This Time.
> 
> *Kronk voice* Oh Yeah, It’s All Coming Together.

**Author's Note:**

> me: this is not going to become a texting fic because i hate those  
> also me: writes 30 pages of mostly texting
> 
> Did You Know: Originally chapter 1 and 2 were only one whole chapter but I decided to split them to make the reading more amenable.
> 
> Also, I know that this fic starts light-hearted but I'm warning you, this ride is going to get progressively more angsty as we carry on.


End file.
